Dib in the PITS
by JoeMerl
Summary: A girl more chipper than Keef, a boy more crazy than Dib, giant robots and naked baby pictures-this alien-fighting club wasn't turning out quite how Dib had expected. Slight one-sided Dib/OC, implied one-sided Gretchen/Dib. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue: Dr O'Sullivan's Surprise

Hello readers. This is my first _Invader Zim_ fanfiction. It is Dib-centric, has elements of humor, mystery, friendship and a _tiny_ bit of romance (really the romance is just part of the humor), and will hopefully update fairly regularly.

As cliche as it sounds, this is only the prologue, and yes, it kind of stinks, but it makes understanding things later a little easier. The story gets better as it goes on, I promise.

* * *

Prologue  
Dr. O'Sullivan's Surprise

Dr. Patrick O'Sullivan, forty-five years old, one of the leading researchers in astronomy and astrophysics at the university, recipient of the prestigious Golden Brain Award for his work with Professor Membrane, and the equally-prestigious Smartypants Prize with his wife Debra O'Sulluvan, was in his lab late that night, working on the calculations for a new invention that could revolutionize human understanding of the space-time continuum.

While listening to DDR on his headphones, of course.

_Hey Mr. Wonderful,  
Oh you're so incredible,  
Hey Mr. Wonderful,__  
Wonderful to me.  
Hey Mr. Wonderful,  
Oh you're irresistible--_

_RING! RING!_

"Oh!" Dr. O'Sullivan realized his phone had been ringing for several minutes. He quickly switched off his music and answered. "H-hello?"

There was a pause, followed by his wife's voice. "You were listening to that song again, weren't you?"

"Er, well--i-is there something you need, darling?"

"Just wondering when you were planning on getting home, Pat. It's awfully late."

"About an hour, I think. I'm just finishing up for the night."

"Alright. See you soon. Love you."

"Love you too, Deb."

Dr. O'Sullivan hung up, yawned and stretched. He glanced up at the clock. Almost midnight. He scolded himself for getting so distracted by his work; he really needed to stop doing that. He had a family at home, after all; he didn't want to be like old Membrane, locked up in his lab all day and night...

As Dr. O'Sullivan gathered up his things, he heard a noise behind him. He paused and turned around, blinking in the dark room, illuminated only by his desk lamp. He frowned. "Sal?" he called, thinking of the old and clumsy laboratory security guard. "You there?"

There was no answer. Dr. O'Sullivan shrugged and turned back to his desk, collecting his papers into his briefcase. Then he heard another sound, very slight, like someone brushing up against one of the tables of the room.

"Who's there?" he said, turning around again. He squinted in the darkness. The room seemed to be empty. He adjusted his glasses slightly. "Hello?"

Then he saw something, very slight, very quick. A kind of shimmer in the dark, just a momentary thing, so brief he would have thought he had imagined it, if not a second later he felt something hit him, hard, on the head.

"Agh!"

His head swam; his eyes watered; he staggered, then felt something grab him roughly. For a moment he was unable to focus, and the next thing he knew everything went back.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dr. O'Sullivan groaned, eyes opening slowly. For a moment he struggled to remember what had happened, and why he seemed to be lying alone on the cold metal floor instead of his own soft bed with Debra sleeping sounding beside him. He looked up blearily, unable to see well with his glasses askew. Was this his office? No, though the two places were similar...this looked like some kind of lab or workroom, but the walls were all white metal, and it was all much to brightly lit...

"Where...am I?" he mumbled, unable to either think or speak very clearly.

"You are in my lab, Doctor."

Dr. O'Sullivan turned his head in the direction of the voice, and suddenly his hazy mind snapped alert, his eyes widened as he saw the being before him.

"You're a--you're an--"

"An alien, yes."

"Wha-what do you want from me?" he asked, voice trembling.

The alien's look was inscrutable. It turned its head away, but continued to watch him out of the corners of its inhuman eyes. "I need your help," it said simply, motioning for him to stand. "Follow me."

* * *

...Yeah. Kind of stupid, but that song is just so silly to stick in random places. Anyway, I hope you move on the next chapter, where we actually start seeing **real** _Invader Zim_ characters.


	2. CH 1: The Flier

Chapter One  
The Flier

It was the last skool bell of the day, but the halls were already deserted; the bell ending classes had rang about ten minutes ago, and the skool had emptied in moments. My locker was open in front of me, as I carefully put away all my skool books and filled by backpack with more important things— my DNA scanner, my X-ray goggles, and most importantly of all, my photo album. The album didn't have any pictures of me, or my dad or sister or anybody like that— with a lock and with the word CLASSIFIED boldly written across its cover, it was filled with pictures of a certain green alien, his operations, and a other paranormal phenomena.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall, and hurried, taking just a minute to decide between my welding laser and my xenolinguistic translator. Throwing the laser back in my locker, I slammed the door and lifted my now-three-ton backpack onto my shoulders, staggering a little as the metal instruments inside clanked against each other. I glanced at the clock again; five minute to four. I hurried off towards Room 106, but had only walked a few steps before I heard a loud yell from behind me.

"Dib-stink!"

I paused. I felt my face twist into something between a smile and a scowl, registering the odd mix of annoyance and excitement rising inside my chest. I turned slowly and, evenly as I could, responded, "Yes, _Zim?"_

The short green menace was standing ten feet away from me, booted feet planted firmly on the linoleum floor, clawed hands balled into fists; his fake human eyes were narrowed in a glare of rage. One robotic spider leg was extended from his PAK— even though no one was around except for me and him, I interpreted it as a bold show of his fury. Pieced by the spider leg was a single sheet of printed paper.

"What is _this?!"_ he sneered, as the robotic arm shook the paper in front of me. Now I grinned outright; even from across the hall, I could make out the writing on it.

"Oh, that?" I said, daring to walk casually towards him, trying to look nonchalant even as I struggled to maintain the bulging weight that was slowly changing the shape of my spine. "Just a little something I talked to the principal about…"

"'The Swollen Eyeball Junior Investigators Club?!'" Zim read, tearing the flier from his PAK's claw into his own; the spider-like appendage vanished into his back. "'Come investigate the wonderful world of paranormal phenomena and learn about monsters, spirits and _extraterrestrials."_ His eyes narrowed at the last word, his voice a furious sneer. "'First meeting held at 4:00 PM Monday in Room 106, for information see Dib Nolastnamegiven?!'"

"What's the matter?" I said, crossing my arms confidently over my chest, even as my knees began to buckle painfully. "Anyone's allowed to start up any club they want, _Zim._ Maybe you could start up a club for you and your fellow aliens? 'Course, I don't know how many people around here would be interested…"

"Errrr— !" Zim crumpling the paper and threw it on the floor; he was actually shaking with rage. "Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do, Dib-filth!" he raged, pointing an accusing finger at me. "You're conspiring against me! You hope that this stupid— _club_ will help you find other _disgusting_ hyumans like yourself, so that you can work together to defeat me! Well, I'm not falling for it, _Dib! _You will never defeat the amazing _ZIM!"_ And with that, he turned around and marched out of the skool, storming and kicking things as he went. The effect was somewhat ruined when he tripped over a trashcan, though, and I just turned around and chuckled, pulling my heavy backpack in the direction of the room.

_Zim's actually right for once, _I thought as I turned the corner and spotted Room 106 at the end of the hall. My mission in starting up a paranormal investigators' club was clear— find a way to destroy Zim. Unfortunately, I had never really managed to do this by myself— hard as I had tried, any victory I ever managed over Zim never really managed to hold him back for long because, except for the occasional aid of my apathetic sister Gaz, nobody was ever really willing to help me. But now that I had convinced the Swollen Eyeballs to let me open up a Junior Investigators' club, and the principal had (reluctantly) okayed it, that wouldn't be a problem anymore— now I'd be able to find people who would actually believe me, people who were smart enough to see what was right in front of their eyes, even if it didn't add up with their prosaic view of the world.

"That's right Zim; be afraid," I muttered to myself as I passed by Rooms 112, 110 and 108. "Soon I'll have more people on my side, people who'll see you for what you _really_ are. Then nothing can stop me from ending your stupid little invasion once and for all."

I smiled as I reached for the doorknob of Room 106. _This is my most brilliant plan yet,_ I thought. And that wonderful thought sang happily in my mind, until the unfortunate moment when I actually opened the door.


	3. CH 2: The PITS

Okay, to the two people I know of who have read this, and anyone else, sorry it took me a while to write Chapter Two, but it's pretty long, so I hope that makes up for it. (It was actually supposed to be longer, but I've split my chapters differently than my original plan.) I hope everyone enjoys my assorted weird OCs. :-)

* * *

Chapter Two  
The PITS

"What the..."

_"DIB!"_

_"Agh!"_

I suddenly fell backwards as, in a brief flash of orange and blue, a ninety-pound something threw itself at me out of nowhere and threw its arms around my body. Half a second later I lay, stunned and dazed, on the floor, with the horrible thing sitting on my knees and jabbering insanely.

"--so nice to see you again, wow, Dib ol' buddy, isn't this great--"

_"Ow_--Keef--get off!"

I pushed him roughly off of me and sat up, momentarily unfocused. He stopped talking (a rare occurence, based on my experience with him) and looked at me with puppy-dog eyes.

"So, uh...I take it you're here for the meeting?" I asked, feeling a dead weight sink into my stomach at the thought of it. Keef was not exactly the person you wanted to have around for a serious discussion about the latest boy band, let alone something important like paranormal investigation.

"Yeah!" said Keef, nodding vigorously. "When I saw the fliers and read that _you _were starting a club, I knew I had to join! And the others are here, too--come on!"

He grabbed my hand and pulled me up before I could object, dragging me into the room; though I nearly fell back again from my strained backpack, Keef seemed to have a preternatural, hyperactive strength that defied most of the laws of nature. here was a single long table in the middle of the class; aside from me and Keef, there were three other people sitting around it. One was a pale, husky boy with messy, limp black hair and dark eyes, wearing a plain black T-shirt and pants. His eye was twitching constantly, glancing around as though terrified something was going to jump out at him at any moment. On the other side of the table a boy and girl were sitting together. The girl, who was talking animatedly to her companion, had dyed blue hair with purple streaks in it. The boy, who looked younger than anyone else in the room, had brown hair and looked somewhat annoyed, but was listening to the girl attentively.

"This is it?" I muttered, feeling my buoyant heart drop down heavily into my stomach to join the mass of lead Keef had created there. Somehow I had been expecting more people, though now that I thought about it that didn't make much sense at all--I knew that paranormal investigation was not a particularly popular field, especially at this school, despite its pressing importance. Really four other people was a pretty good turn-out.

The girl with the blue hair suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and looked up, followed by her friend and the greasy-haired boy sitting on the other side of the table. "Oh, hey!" she said, cocking her head to one side and giving me a little wave. "You must be..." She consulted the club flier in front of her for a moment. _"Die-b?"_

"Uh, it's _Dib."_

"Ah! Okay!" she said, cocking her head again and smiling broadly, her eyes closed. I drew back slightly in fear; a smile that wide and perky, I thought, could not possibly be human.

I walked over and sat down at the head of the table, finally able to drop my bulging backpack onto the floor; Keef sat down with an empty seat between him and me on one side, and him and the girl on the other. Then a moment of awkward silence fell over the room. The pale boy continued to twitch, eyes darting wildly from one way to another. The girl with the blue hair continued to smile her eerily happy smile, which was echoed by an only-slightly-less-eerie one from Keef. The small boy, meanwhile, looked at me skeptically, eyebrow raised. It suddenly occurred to me I had no idea how I was supposed to begin the meeting.

I cleared my throat. _"Ahem._ So...um, maybe we should start by going around and introducing ourselves," I suggested, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "Let's start with...you."

I pointed at the pale kid, who let out a great _"Agh!"_ of surprise, making us all jump. "M-my name?" he asked, his eyes jumping from one of us to the other. "Eh— everybody calls me Jack. Won't tell 'em my real name. That's how they _getcha!"_ His head snapped to one side suddenly, as though sure he would catch 'them' beside him. "Almost got 'em that time," he muttered, lowering his head.

"Ooooookay," I said slowly, unconsciously leaning back in my seat to put myself a few precious millimeters away from him. I coughed again and turned to the girl, who was looking away dreamily, playing with her bluish hair. "Um…how about you? Tell us about yourself."

I quickly regretted this decision.

"WELL!" said the girl, snapping to attention. "My name is Peggy, Peggy O'Sullivan. I'm new in town, I just moved here from out of state, this is only my second week here but already I really like this skool, I'm making a ton of new friends already. I'm in Mr. Gershwin's class, he's really nice, do you know him? You're in that weird old Ms. Bitters class aren't you, I don't really like her very much, she seems really creepy. Anyway, I moved here from out of state, and…"

She continued to talk for the next several minutes, very rapidly, until I began to suspect that she didn't, in fact, need to breathe at all. She seemed unable to keep one topic of conversation for more than a few seconds; her monologue ran from her old home to her new house, the comparison between the two, everything she knew about the city, her old friends, her cat, and an in-depth analysis of the Singaporean financial market.

"…and so anyway, I just saw one of these fliers up in the hallway and I thought it sounded cool, I'm really into the whole paranormal science thing you know, especially unicorns and stuff, so I thought I should come and maybe meet some new people and stuff. Oh, and this is my little brother Rodger," she added offhandedly, motioning to the younger boy sitting next to her.

Rodger, thankfully, was not as loquacious as his sister; he merely looked up at me and gave me a hard, suspicious look— the kind most of the kids gave me, which made me suspect that he was less open to the paranormal than Peggy was. He made no effort to tell the club about himself after his sister's long speech.

I was a bit stunned on what to say for a few seconds— except for maybe telling Peggy (very loudly) that unicorns did _not _count as paranormal science, but I clamped down on my annoyance and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Okay then. Um…well…" I got up and went over to the blackboard, picking up a piece of chalk from the tray. I cleared my throat a third time, and tried to gather my thoughts; I really should have practiced this beforehand. "This is the first meeting of the _Swollen Eyeball Junior Investigators Club,_" I said, carefully writing the title in large letters on the board as I spoke. "Or, uh…" I raised an eyebrow. "'SEJI' for short, I guess. Now, we are— "

"Question," said Roger, speaking for the first time in a low, scratchy voice, raising his hand into the air.

I was taken aback. "Uh— yes, Rodger?"

"What's with the name?"

"Yeah, I don't like it either," Peggy said, tapping her finger against her chin. "I mean, why are we the _Swollen Eyeballs?_ What kind of a club mascot is that?"

"What? It's not a mascot!" I exclaimed, motioning at the name, using my piece of chalk as a pointer. "The Swollen Eyeball Network is a very influential group in the paranormal co— "

"I don't like it either," Jack agreed, gaze still twitching continually from one of us to another. "What do we know about this Eyeball group? Eyeballs _to spy!"_ he added, his own eyeballs suddenly going wide as if with horror at the thought.

"What? The Swollen Eyeballs are not— "

"I vote we change the name," Peggy interrupted, looking around at the rest of us. "All in favor?"

"Aye!" said Peggy and Rodger. Keef raised his hand with a fatuous smile. Jack didn't speak, but his eyes twitched back over to them as if in a sign of his assent.

"Wha— " I was at a loss for words; they couldn't do that, could they? "But _I'm _the club president, I— "

"Well, who says _you_ get to be club president?" Rodger said, raising his eyebrow skeptically towards me. "I mean, we didn't vote you in yet."

"Nobody said anything about voting!" I cried, trying desperately to regain control of the unraveling situation.

"Oh. So, like, we're fascists or something?" Peggy said, in what sounded like a sincerely confused tone.

"No, we're not— alright, we can pick a different name," I said, lowering my eyes and giving the floor a dark look. "Does anyone have any _other _suggestions?"

"We shouldn't have a name at all," Jack said, his gaze narrow. "If we have a name, it'll be easier for 'em to find us, track us. Monitor our behavior…"

"No, no, we need some sort of name," Peggy said, again tapping her finger on her face thoughtfully. "How about…'the Pretty Ponies!'"

"I like it!" Keef said, eyes going wide as if in ecstasy.

_"What?!_ What do pretty ponies have to do with paranormal investigation?!"

"Oh…I guess you have a point," she said carelessly, as I balled my hands and ground my teeth in fury. "Paranormal investigation…huh, but it's hard to think of anything fun out of _that…"_

"How about we just do it simple?" Rodger suggested, clearly annoyed by the whole topic. "We can be 'the Paranormal Investigators.'"

"A little too simple," Peggy said. "How about, 'The Paranormal Investigators of Tomorrow Club?' Or 'Society.' Yes, I think that sounds better," she added, nodding her head as if the matter were decided.

I sighed. "Alright. All in favor of Peggy's idea, say 'aye."

"Aye!" came three voices, with Jack again giving a twitch of reluctant acceptance.

I bit my lip and wiped off the old club name with my sleeve, and began to scrawl our new title in its place. "Alright, then, we are now the…'Paranormal Investigators of Tomorrow Society.' Or, for short, the…"

I finished and took a step back to examine the board, my eyes going wide for a second. "The…'PITS,'" I said, putting my forehead to my hand. "_Ugh…_of course…"

* * *

Oh...poor Dib. As if suffering _wasn't_ the whole meaning of his existence...


	4. CH 3: Dib's Disasterous Debate of Doom

Well, I suck. Almost a month before I updated this story. Damn it, Joey, you said you would be more attentive to about this...if only I didn't waste so much time on the Internet, with all its shiny glories.

Anyway, once again to my two confirmed "fans" and any others, sorry to take so long, and here's Chapter Three. As you can tell by the ending, things will be getting more interesting soon. ;-)

* * *

Chapter Three  
Dib's Disastrous Debate of Doom

"Okay," I said in a low voice, putting my hands down on the table and leaning forward in what I hoped was a tense, dramatic way, and I was pleased to see the others unconsciously move closer in, straining to hear me. "Now onto the first order of business. You may be shocked to discover that there is a hidden alien agent working against us _within this very school."_

"Oh, you mean that really old kid?" Peggy interrupted, flicking a bit of hair off of her shoulder offhandedly.

"Yes, the re--wait, no, not Old Kid!" I said, straightening up and glaring.

"Do you mean that one kid, the Letter M? That sounds like something an alien would have as a name."

"A really dumb alien," Rodger said moodily, arms crossed over his chest.

"No, I don't mean the Letter M either!"

"Is it me?"

"No, Keef, it's not you."

"Or that weird kid, the one that we met in the lunch line, what was his name--Poonchy? Is Poonchy the alien?"

"Er, no…that theory didn't pan out," I mumbled, turning my head as I felt my face burn. "I'm talking about Zim!"

"Zim? Who's Zim?"

"He's really nice," Keef gushed.

"I think he's that green kid we saw muttering to himself on the playground," Rodger muttered behind his hand.

"Yes! Exactly! The kid with the _green skin _is the alien!"

_"Oh," _said Peggy, a look of dawning comprehension on her face. Finally they were getting it.

"I heard he just had a skin condition."

Or not.

"Skin cond--he has no ears! Have you ever heard of a skin condition that makes you have _no ears?!"_

"Leprosy could do that," Rodger pointed out.

"Yeah, but doesn't that make you have really _pale _skin?" Peggy wondered, tapping his finger against her face thoughtfully.

"_He _has really pale skin," Rodger muttered, pointing at me.

"Hey, yeah, you _are _pretty pale," Peggy said, looking at me and turning her head to one side. "You didn't mention that you have leprosy, Dib."

"_I do not have leprosy!!" _I screamed, grabbing my head and nearly pulling out large chunks of my hair. Growling, I reached into my backpack and pulled out my photo album. "Here, look! I have documentation, dozens of pictures of Zim and his operations that I've collected over months of research, proving beyond doubt that he is not what he claims to be!"

I threw it, angrily, onto the table; it slid across the polished surface. Peggy grabbed it and began to flip through it at random, Rodger and Keef looking over her shoulder to see.

"These don't look very…alienish to me," Peggy commented, turning the book to one side.

"What?! Whuddya mean, look!" I stormed around the table to stand behind her, and jabbed a finger at the photo. "Look! There's Zim, in his alien form!"

"It's just him trying to block you from taking his picture," Rodger said dismissively.

"Yeah, well, that's because I caught him when he was taking off one of his contacts--look, see, you can see a bit of his real eye behind his hand, there! It's all big and red like some sort of--weird alien bug thing!"

Peggy looked somewhat skeptical, eyebrows raised but with a pensive look as if she were at least considering the merits of my argument. Rodger made no attempt to hide his disbelief; his eyes gave me the same disparaging glare I got from most people whenever I delved into paranormal phenomena. Jack, meanwhile, seemed to be ignoring us entirely, and was now just crouching forward in his seat, muttering to himself about the CIA trying to take control of his toenails.

"Well, okay, I'll admit, that's not my best picture--but look over here!" I flipped through to another page. "See that!"

"What's that?"

"It's GIR!" Keef said, his simpering smile widening.

"A…dog?"

"A green dog! With a zipper down its chest, standing on its hind legs, dancing to 'Funkytown!'"

"Wow!" Peggy said, her eyes going wide.

"Yeah, see?"

"That's a pretty neat trick!"

"Neat--ARGH! That's Zim's robot! It just disguises itself as a dog, look--lemme find a picture of it without its disguise--here!"

"That's a house," Rodger said, his tone harder than ever.

"A glowing green house! And look, I angled the camera into the window, you can kind of see the robot sitting on the couch there with a bowl of chips--"

"Actually, I think those are nachos," Keef said.

"_Who cares what they are?!"_

"Can dogs eat nachos?" Peggy wondered, chewing the edge of her pen. "Seems like something that would make them sick."

"_He's a robot!"_

"Oh, yeah. Can robots eat nachos?"

"Can they--I don't know! Look!" I grabbed the photo album roughly from Peggy's hands and began to flip through it. "I put a bookmark in here somewhere--there!" I thrust the photo into Peggy's hand and pointed dramatically. "What do you see _there?"_

"Um…I _think_ that's a naked baby picture of you."

"Exactly! A naked--wha--agh!" I quickly snatched back the album, feeling my face go red again. I quickly grabbed the offending portrait and began to tear it up in my hands. "That's, uh--either my dad made a mistake, or my sister--anyway, look, the point is, I _know _Zim is an alien, but I've never really been able to get any proof. _That's_ why I need you guys's help. If we all pull together, I think we can come up with a plan to get hard evidence on Zim, and then use it to expose him for the alien menace that he truly is!"

I pounded the table dramatically, hoping to emphasize my point. There was a slight pause as the three of them (well, two of them--Jack was still absorbed in his own ranting) looked up at me in silence. Then Rodger, voice full of contempt, asked, "And _how_ exactly?"

"Well, Uh…" I dropped my pose and rubbed my hands together awkwardly. "I…haven't totally figured that part out yet, to be honest. But I--"

"What's that?" Peggy interrupted suddenly, turning her head with a frown.

I froze, and strained my ears; a moment later I heard it too, a sudden _THUD! _that seemed to be coming form outside. A moment later is was followed by another _THUD!_, and another, and was followed momentarily by people yelling and what sounded like a car alarm going off.

Jack suddenly seemed to break out of his insane trance and looked up, eyes wide in horror. "It's the FBI! They're after my toenails!"

He quickly ducked under the table. Peggy, Rodger and Keef simply looked around in bewilderment. "What's going on?" Peggy asked, a worried look on her face.

I ran over to the window, pulling aside the blinds to look out. "What the--oh, _come on!"_

Outside, a giant robot was rampaging through the town.


	5. CH 4: Bots and Blame

Hmm...is this better? Should I just get rid of the "Author's Notes" chapter all together? It's a pain to edit two documents every time I want to update, but it kind of looks better...what do you think?

Anyway. Sorry it took me so long to update--almost two months, though "skoolwork" kept me busy until the beginning of May, so there you go. I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I edited Chapters 2 and 3 a few weeks ago, I wanted to add another character. _Mea culpa_ to those who've already read them and don't want to go redo it, but it just occurred to me after the fact that one of my favorite _IZ _characters would have been perfect in the PITS, so...yeah. Go back and re-read, I guess, or if not, just read below to find out who I decided to add.

Hopefully I will start updating more frequently...but I make no promises. Anyway, enjoy Chapter Four!

* * *

Chapter Four  
Bots and Blame

"Dib? What's going on out there? Do you see something?"

I took a few shaky steps back from the window; I was too shocked for a moment to register Peggy's question. Then--in what I admit retrospectively probably wasn't one of my most well-thought-out plans--I suddenly spun around towards the door and, quickly yelling "Wait here!" over my shoulder, dashed out into the hallway and, a moment later, emerged from the skool into a happy, sunny afternoon filled with screams and the acrid smell of burning smoke.

_"Agh!"_

I've noticed that most of the time, people seem perfectly happy to completely ignore the paranormal, but none of Zim's normal weirdness was anything compared to the scene on the street. People screamed as the machine spun around, and as I watched in amazement one of its massive feet smashed into a parked car, quickly crushing it in. Pedestrians were running every direction possible away from the thing; as I watched one car crashed into a street lamp, and the driver, shocked and sputtering, somehow managed to pull himself out and run just before the foot smashed the roof in right where his head was a moment before_._

_"Enemy unit spotted. Capturebot 416 must eliminate."_

The robot continued to smash the car in, and the people around me, taking advantage of this momentary distraction, fled, leaving the thing alone on the street. Without thinking I ran down the skool steps and onto the road, stopping to gape maybe twenty feet away from where the robot stood on the smashed car, now trying to pull a branch off from a nearby tree. Suddenly it swiveled around to face me, narrowing its single eye. I just stood there, gaping, utterly amazed by the thing I was seeing so plainly in front of me, this amazing machine that was stampeding down a formerly-crowded city street in the middle of the day.

Now, I had seen giant alien robots before--Zim had several--but this one looked different than most of those. The robot was vaguely humanoid--it had arms and legs, anyway--but it had no separation between body and head; the whole thing was just one big torso of a rounded triangle, its bottom point flattened, forming a pair of "hips" from which its mechanical legs emerged. It was about twelve feet tall, and high above me its single eye shone, a long oval with a glowing red pupil in the middle--a pupil, I saw, that was now turned directly onto me. On its chest below the eye there was a kind of purple bubble, that seemed to be made of some kind of shining plastic or something. I squinted at it--I had seen those kinds of pods on Zim's robots before, they were usually the windshields to the compartments where Zim would be, controlling the machine. I squinted; I couldn't really see well in the glare of the sun, but I couldn't detect anyone in it, or any of the levers or seats that usually were there.

For a moment I heard a whirring sound, which could literally have been the gears in its head turning, trying to figure me out. Suddenly it released the branch it was trying to pull from its tree and swiveled around entirely in my direction._ "Target acquired. Capturebot 416 will now collect sample."_

And it lunged towards me.

_"Agh!"_

Suddenly remembering that I could move, I jumped aside, just as the robot flew through the air. It hit the ground hard just as I rolled out of the way, smashing the asphalt and sending pieces raining on my head. Evidently its slow-dramatic-walk-of-bulkiness wasn't its only setting; the thing, crouching as it landed like a trained ninja or a cat, quickly recovered and stood, its glowing eye finding me again within moments.

_"Sample detected. Capturebot 416 must collect sample."_

It leapt again, and again I let out a cry and rolled out of the way, just as it slammed into the street, leaving another crater in the asphalt road. I jumped to my feet and ran, screaming; I admit, not my most heroic moment, but probably the best idea anybody could have come up with. The robot turned slowly, scanning the area for me; I quickly dove behind a large piece of asphalt debris from its first attack, pulling my legs in to my chest just as its eye scanned the space they had been. Its gaze passed over me without any response.

I sat back against the asphalt, panting, straining my ears to hear the robot over the sound of a beeping car alarm and its own banging footsteps. I had to think of some kind of a plan, I thought, some way to stop this thing...not that I had any idea how to do that. If only I had some of my equipment with me…but that, I remembered with a pang, was all in my backpack, back inside the skool…how could I get back inside and get it without—

_"TARGET FOUND!"_

_"AGH!"_

The robot's metallic claw suddenly shot down from directly over my head, its fingertips slamming through the street into the ground; I rolled away just in time and ran. The robot quickly ran out toward me— I ran past a car which it sent flying with a wave of its tentacled arm, as its giant feet left more cracking footsteps in the street.

"Oh, come on!" I cried, panting and feeling a stitch aching in my side. "Everybody else outran this thing without it even noticing, why's it chasing me?!"

Unfortunately the robot did not seem to think it needed to justify itself--possibly because it was getting closer— I was not a very fast runner, and though even the slowest of people can find themselves running three minute miles when being chased by bizarre and terrifying things, it was frankly a miracle that the thing hadn't caught me so far. Now, suddenly, its tentacled claw shot out again, and this time I was too slow— its three claws closed around me, and I let out a cry as it raised me into the air and began to swing me back and forth. I screamed.

_"Target acquired, target acquired! Capturebot 416 will— oops!"_

The "oops" was so unexpected that it almost made me forget what had caused it, but not quite. As it had been swinging me wildly and for no apparent reason, I had slipped (quite accidentally) out from its highly-polished claws, and was now flying through the air, screaming as the brick wall of the skool seemed to be shooting at me at a thousand miles an hour. Fortunately I didn't hit it, though— I hit the window instead with a _CRASH!_ My spine suddenly exploded with pain as it connected to the edge of a table, and then I fell to the floor, bleeding and moaning among a pile of broken glass.

"Dib?!"

I moaned and looked up. Keef was sitting on the other side of the table, jumping as I landed— the bot seemed to have thrown me into the window right back into Room 106. Jack was on the floor, still cowering nearby under the table; Peggy and Rodger didn't seem to be anywhere in sight. Realizing my stroke of luck, I quickly crawled onto my hands and knees, and began to search the floor, ignoring Keef's cries and questions. My backpack. Where was my backpack?!

"Aha!"

I lunged for my backpack and grabbed it by its strap— just as the robot burst through the wall into.

_"Agh!" _Keef cried, and ducked under the table with Jack, as the robot quickly threw out its extendable arm again and grabbed me. I let out a cry, but instinctively tightened my grip on my backpack— though heavy and bulging, the added weight didn't seem to throw off the robot at all as it suddenly tossed me back outside again, so that I hit the street with another backbreaking blow.

_"Oof!"_

My backpack clattered alongside me; there was a good chance something in there broke, but I didn't care. The robot turned slowly from its position inside the skool classroom, which had very little wall left separating it from the outside; it began to walk towards me again, beeping. I sat up as quickly as I could, opened my backpack and began to dig wildly inside.

_"Capturebot 416 must collect sample."_

"Come on— where is it— yes!"

I pulled out my laptop, quickly throwing it open and turning it on--it was normal Earthly, not as advanced as some of the alien stuff I had stolen from Zim or Tak, but top-of-the-line by human standards, and I had managed to tinker with it a bit myself to make it compatible with some of Zim's technology. I had even used it a few times to break into Zim's house, though whenever I did Zim eventually figured out how I was doing it and managed to beef up his security. Still, I thought, pulling out a cord from its side, I might be able to integrate this with the robot, and maybe put a stop to it, maybe even download information from it to figure out what it was, what was going on.

Assuming, of course, I could get it to connect with the robot's CPU without being murdered.

_"Capturebot 416 must collect sample!"_

It reached out one claw again, which I ducked, leaving my backpack and holding the computer to my chest as I ran. I went in a circle, it following me with its glowing red eye. How could I find a way to interface it with the robot without it noticing me?

_"Capturebot 416 must collect sample!"_

Its arm shot out and this time got me again; I let out another cry as it lifted me into the air, this time holding me up by my trench coat, with my entire body dangling down, my arms tight around my machine to keep it from falling. It gazed at me with its one red eye, the pupil growing wide at the sight of me. With a growl I attempted to lurch my body at the thing, and I heard a RIIIP from behind me as I suddenly fell.

_"Whoa!"_

The hem of my trench coat had ripped; I fell suddenly onto the robot's back, released one arm from my laptop to grab the thing's head, and hung there. The robot suddenly swiveled around, which wasn't good for me— I swung around with it, and let out a cry as I almost lost my grip and fell.

_"Capturebot 416 unable to find target. Capturebot 416 starting to feel woozy."_

_Woozy? _I thought, but I had no time to question the robot's choice of words; I saw what looked like some kind of plug on the side of the robot's head, and with my free hand managed somehow to grab a hold of the cord sticking out of my computer. If only I could…I stretched out my hand with the cord as the robot's head turned again…_come on…_

Meanwhile the robot seemed to have realized where I was, and was now reaching with its clawed hands, trying to grab me, but with each jerk of its head I was taken out of its reach. I could not, however, reach the plug from where I was._ Come on…_

_"Capturebot 416 must collect sample! Capturebot 416 must collect sample!"_

_Come on…COME ON!_

It was in! The plug went in! I slammed the machine against my body--the best way I could think of to press the 'Start' button, given my position--and I heard it begin to work, beeping and whirring.

_"Capturebot 416 must collect sample! Capturebot 416 must— "_

Suddenly the robot stopped reaching, and its head froze; I froze too, startled. For a moment there was a dull whirring sound, sounding loud in the sudden silence. And then the robot transformed.

_"WHOA!"_

The corners of its 'head' suddenly shot forward into its body, turning its triangular shape into a kind of cylinder. Its arms snapped towards its body, where there were kind of arm-shaped niches so that they seemed to disappear. Its legs folded away too; it was now just a torso and hips, and now only about half its original size as the whole thing seemed to compress itself, folding up for room. It looked vaguely like a kind of rocket, I thought— just as it blasted off.

_"Aaaggghhh!"_

The robot-cum-rocket blasted into the air, and I, still holding desperately onto it, began to fly with it— I let go and fell, my laptop's cord jerked out of the robot's head, and I fell, hitting the ground hard a moment later for the— what? Third, fourth time in less than ten minutes? I looked up, dazed, in time to see the robot spiraling into the air. It sputtered for a moment, coughing like an old car, and a few pieces of metal rained down from it onto the ground. Then it seemed to recover and shot into the air again, and, after another brief moment, began to shimmer— for a moment it was fuzzy, indistinct, and then it vanished completely from view, the trail of fire coming from its bottom momentarily there before it, too, shimmered into invisibility.

I sat up, rubbing my head, groaning; my laptop lay on the ground next to my arm, cord dangling, banged up, the screen scratched and cracked, with tiny bits of alien shrapnel impaled all over it. It was beeping furiously; _CONNECTION BROKEN! _flashed across the screen, even as a half-loaded bar showed below it.

I looked up at the sky; the robot, or rocket, or whatever it had been, was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I was too dazed to know what to do, and then, suddenly thinking, I turned back to my computer and began to punch furiously at the keyboard. My laptop had managed to interact with it, at least partially— maybe it had managed to record some of the robot's programming, could give some insight into—

_"FREEZE!"_

_"Agh!"_

My laptop fell from my hands and clattered onto the ground; I looked up to see a cop standing ten feet away from me, gun drawn, with three police cars pulling up behind him, flashing their sirens. I spun around as I heard sirens coming from the other side of the street, and from my left down Maple Avenue. As each car screeched to a halt cops began pouring out, all pointing their guns and glaring at me.

Slowly I turned my head around to look at the scene. The street was completely destroyed, the asphalt broken and cracked, huge gaping craters in two or three places, cars smashed and tree branches lying in the road. To my right, a huge section of the skool wall was completely smashed in; I could now see Keef gazing out of it hesitantly, a still cowardly Jack peeking out from between his legs behind him.

An entire street laid to waste. No robot. No other people. No one to blame except for one disheveled eleven-year-old whom most of the cops probably recognized for the dozen or so other times I had been found around huge disasters.

"Oh,_ come ON!"_ I screamed, slapping my head into my hand, my laptop beeping at my feet.

* * *

You know, I thought this was going to be the _shortest_ chapter so far...ah well. Hope you all like action. ;-)

Oh, also--if anyone's interested, I've started another _IZ_ fanfic called "Endorsements of the Doomed," a rather bizarre short-story collection about the current U.S. Presidential election. Look it up on my profile if you like non-partisan candidate-bashing with an _Invader Zim_ twist. :-)


	6. CH 5: Analysis and Abduction

Wow...this was another long one. I considered breaking this up into two chapters, but I think it works better this way. Note the change in perspective between the two parts, though--the end of the chapter is in third-person, so we can find out something that Dib doesn't get to see. This is the only time in this story I'm planning on doing that, though. And as you can see I didn't update the "Author's Notes" chapter, I think I'm gonna stop that...looks better but more work. I'll probably go and get rid of it soon. Anyway, enjoy Chapter 5! This is where the plot gets juicy... ;-)

* * *

Chapter Five  
Analysis and Abduction

"...an entire block, tens of thousands of dollars worth of damages--oh, you and your 'para-science'--"

I slammed the front door open moodily and marched inside, as Dad followed in behind me, sighing under his breath. My sister Gaz was sitting on the couch in the living room, the TV on and her Game Slave 2 in hand; I knew, though, that no amount of electronic noise would distract her if she wanted to listen in on what was going on, though whether she _would_ want to was always a tricky question.

"Oh, son, if only you would study _real_ science like me, then you wouldn't go programming these giant robots to destroy half the town--"

"It wasn't me!" I said indignantly, whipping around to face him. "I was trying to _stop_ the robot, I didn't make it--"

But Dad didn't seem to be listening. He simply wandered off into the kitchen, and, I was willing to bet, down into his basement lab, still stuck in his disappointed monologue about his "poor, insane son."

I let out a low growl and stomped into the living room. I crossed my arms over my chest, threw myself into an armchair and glared darkly at the floor. "Oh, hey, you're home," Gaz said, as if she had just noticed--maybe she had, I thought--not even looking up from her game. "How did your stupid paranormal club go?"

"Not well," I said through clenched teeth.

She made a small sound of interest, except she somehow managed to do it in a way that sounded completely indifferent. "You're on the news, by the way."

"What?!" I said, jumping in my seat. I spun around to the TV, where the anchorwoman had just appeared after one of those horrible McMeaty's commercials. Floating next to her head to the right was the news' stock photo of me (yes, I'm on the news _that_ _much_), looking thoroughly more horrible and insane than I do in real life.

"In other news, tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage occurred on Johnston Street today, when a _horrible_ little insane boy let a giant killer robot lose upon the town. He was taken into police custody before being released into the care of his father, eminent scientist Professor Membrane. This is the eighth time this big-headed child has been arrested for causing major disasters to the city. In other news--"

_"Agh! My--head's--not--BIG!"_I screamed, picking up a pillow and throwing it across the room, where it hit the TV screen and bounced off the anchorwoman's face. "And I've never been arrested!" I added, shooting an accusatory finger at Gaz as though she had accused me. "I was detained for questioning! Charges were never filed!"

"Quit yelling. It's _annoying_me," Gaz said. Her tone was threatening enough for me to sit back against the chair, pouting. I sat there for just a few seconds, though, kicking the chair angrily with my heel, before I jumped off and stormed out of the room.

"I'm taking a shower," I muttered; I was still in my ripped, dirty clothes from the battle with the robot, and my skin was covered in dirt, oil and dried blood from the various scrapes and cuts I had sustained. I stormed into my room, grabbed some clean clothes, then stormed into the bathroom; fifteen minutes later I stormed out in my pajamas, carrying my old clothes in my arms, my long, shaggy hair hanging wet and lank against my face. I shook my head violently for a moment, and it suddenly shot back up into its usual messy shape.

I stormed back into my room (yeah, I know, I was storming a lot, sue me) and threw my dirty clothes onto the floor and threw myself into the chair by my desk, turning on my computer. As it loaded I bent down and began to dig through my backpack, pulled out my laptop, then picked up my dirty shirt and shook it briefly; dozens of little bits of shrapnel fell out onto the floor. I bent down, scooped up a handful of them, then turned back to my computer.

"Okay, robot, let's see where you _really_ came from," I muttered, narrowing my eyes.

I started with my laptop; with a few moments of swift typing, I was able to summon up all the information it had managed to download from the robot before the connection had been broken. A window opened; thousands of lines of pink symbols appeared over a black background, with pictures that seemed to be of various robotic body parts and machine pieces inserted throughout. I squinted at the symbols; "that's definitely writing," I muttered, though of course I couldn't read a word of it.

I sat back in my chair, eyebrow raised. Was it Irken? It was hard to tell; I had seen Irken writing on Zim's technology, and I had Tak's ship in the garage, but unfortunately I had yet to decipher any of it, so I couldn't really tell much about it. These letters looked more-or-less the same, but maybe a bit different, I thought, less sharp...was it some different type of writing? Or maybe it was just a different computer font, assuming aliens wasted their time on that kind of thing as much as humans did.

Well, I had another way of finding out about that thing.

I turned to my other computer, my home unit, which had large, thick wires connecting it to about a dozen other machines I had scattered around my room, one of which sat on my bookshelf, hummed softly as I punched in the computer code to turn it on. It looked a lot like a futuristic microwave--which made sense, since it had been an old, broken-down microwave before I had salvaged it from the trash. However, with a few weeks of work, some computer sensors and some used chewing gum, I had managed to convert it into an atomization scanner that could analyze the elemental or chemical structure of any material. And make popcorn, though that was prone to cause explosions.

I took a handful of the robotic shrapnel and dropped it in the microwave-turned-scanned, rolled my chair back to my computer and pressed ENTER. The microwave began to crackle, and in a moment it seemed to be filled with a bright, blue-white light that filled the entire room; I closed my eyes tightly and looked away, and I was sure that all around the neighborhood people were looking out their windows at my glowing bedroom and wondering what that Membrane kid was up to this time. A moment later the light faded down to a much lower level, though the spinning interior sped faster, with little bolts of electricity shooting occasionally out of the machine--fortunately I had learned from experience to keep it away from anything flammable. A moment later there was a DING!, and the microwave's little ticker screen read FOOD IS READY as my computer screen popped up with a readout of the scan. I spun around in my chair, bent over and began to read.

"'Alloy...elements of iron...unidentified metallic elements,'" I muttered. I sat back, glaring. The scanner couldn't completely tell _what_the bits from the robot were made of; according to the readout on my screen, it was primarily made of metals that existed nowhere on Earth. Hmm, I thought sarcastically, whatever could _that_ mean?

I decided to quickly check something on the Internet. I signed onto my screen name (AgentMothman at TheSwollenEyeball .com) and did a few minutes of quick research, look for information on extraterrestrial metals. Very soon I found information on several different metals, found either in asteroids or detected in space by astronomers, showing spectrographical lines strikingly similar to the ones in the shrapnel. My eyes narrowed.

_"Zim," _I growled, glaring at the screen. Even though I had known all along that he was the only possible culprit, I felt my blood boil as I stared at the confirmation before me. So. It made perfect sense. He finds out about the Swollen Eyeball Junior Investigators' Club at skool, so he sends one of his giant robots to try to destroy our first meeting. Why hadn't it occurred to me that Zim would try to pull something like that? I should have been prepared, set up some kind of a defense, or else arranged for the meeting to be someplace secret...

"Well, it's not gonna be that easy, _Zim," _I apostrophed, clicking the windows off my computer and beginning to shut down. "You're wrong if you think I'm just gonna stop trying to expose you...me and the rest of the S.E.J.I.'ll find a way to defeat you, Zim, if it's the last thing we do!"

I raised my fist triumphantly in the air and let it hang there for a moment, before realizing neither Zim nor anyone else was actually there to hear my dramatic speech. Scowling, I dropped my hand, and was about to finish shutting down my computer when I noticed a message in the corner of the screen: YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE.

I clicked on it without thinking; it was an e-mail from somebody called PgyGurl01. I was about to delete it as spam when the name's significance hit me; I hesitated for a moment, clicked it open, then recoiled, face twisting into a grimace.

_"Ugh..."_

The e-mail had a pink background with flowery designs, and bright lime-green writing with about half a dozen moving emoticons standing out. After taking a moment to process this saccharine sight, I read the letter:

_Dear DIB,_

_Hi! :-D It's me, PEGGY, from the club meeting today! :-) I just wanted to write to apologize for running off while you were gone, but RODGER and I had to rush off, there was something at home we had to take care of. :-( Anyway, I hope the rest of the meeting went well. ;-) BTW, I thought I saw something about you on the news, but I just caught the tail end of it, so what was that about? Something good I hope lol :-D!_

_Anyway, I can't wait for the next PITS meeting! Hope it's soon! :-D See you in skool tomorrow! :-D_

_Love,  
PEGGY ;-)_

Underneath was a large, moving graphic of a frollicking pony.

I let out a shudder and clicked the letter off without responding. I couldn't help but hope that her wish to see me tomorrow wouldn't come true.

I felt distinctly miserable as I shut down my computer for the night. The club meeting had been a disaster even _before_ Zim's interference; what with Peggy, Keef and Jack, the only sane member would probably be Rodger, who seemed to think that _I_ was crazy. Still, I thought, I wasn't going to give up...and thinking of Zim's plan to ruin the club made me even more determined to succeed...

I climbed into bed, leaving my glasses on my table, and curled up into a ball. For a few minutes all I could think about were giant robots, cackling aliens and frollicking ponies until I finally managed to slip into a rough, uneasy sleep.

. . . . . . . . . .

Not far away from the house where Dib lay in his fitful slumber, something was moving down Mulberry Street.

It moved almost silently, with only the smallest brush of air produced by its gliding; and if any of the people were to have looked out of their windows at the street below, dimly lit by streetlights, they would have been hard-pressed to see anything that could be making even those tiny movements. Perhaps, as the sightless thing passed under the harsh yellow light, they might have seen a small flicker, a tiny shimmer in the air like a mirage in the heat, but they would merely have blinked and looked away, and would not have been able to detect the unbelievable thing that was creeping down the street of their neighborhood.

The thing veered off from the road, over one of the lawns; if this hypothetical neighbor had still been looked, he might have noticed the grass suddenly bending slightly, as though something were gliding across it, leaving a faint path like a tire track from a completely smooth wheel...

The thing crept up to a house, sliding into the bushes with only the very smallest amount of rustling and twig-snapping that could be made. Once safely hidden, its cloaking device deactivated with a tiny noise; it was visible now, though crouching low, and in its Stealth Mode, it was nearly impossible to see through the leaves. It peered into one of the windows of the house, into a bedroom where a child lay sleeping. The bedroom was half-lit by a combination of a nightlight and a partially opened door into the hallway beyond; but even if it had not been, the creeping machine would have been able to see the child sleeping in his bed perfectly, detected the bright red hair above the smiling face, the one arm curled around the teddy bear the child was much too old to still be sleeping with, despite his small and childlike appearance.

The thing watched as the bedroom door opened a little wider, and a woman appeared; she gazed for a moment at the child sleeping in his bed, called over a man from another room, and the two smiled for a moment at their happily sleeping son before turning to leave.

As they did, the thing outside their window reached out a claw.

As the metallic pincers made contact with the cool glass of the window, they began to vibrate, then glow a dim blue; as the shaking and the shining spread to the window, the hand slid easily through as though there was no glass in its way at all. Its arm extended farther into the room, its unblinking eye outside staring down at the boy within...

"Ugh..." The boy turned over in his sleep, still smiling, as his eyes fluttered slowly open, and gazed at the darkened room. The claw froze. For a moment the boy's eyes seemed unable to see the claw that was now only a few feet from his bed, and for another moment he seemed unable to comprehend exactly _what_ it was seeing. Finally he frowned slightly. "What the..."

The Capturebot lunged.

"Agh!" Keef cried in surprise, but only for a moment--quick as a cobra bite, the claw snapped forward and closed around his face, drowning out his cry, and then picked him up and, in one swift movement, pulled him out of the window as though it were nothing and threw him at the purple bubble in the middle of its chest. Keef flew through it almost as easily as the window--the purple material rippled slightly as he went through, as if it were some strange liquid, but once inside, Keef found it quite solid--he pounded on the bubble from within, screaming silently, but was utterly unable to break through.

"Initiating subject pacification," the Capturebot intoned in a quiet, hollow tone that Keef could not hear from his place inside it. What he noticed, instead, was the sudden smell of gas as it leaked into his tiny chamber...his head drooped...his pounding fist fell...

The metal wall at the back of the robot's bubble-chamber opened; the unconscious Keef slid quietly through it, vanishing into the depths of the machine, leaving the bubble empty for the robot's next victim. The Capturebot, its first charge caught, now crept in through the intangible wall to search out those who remained in the house.

* * *

_DUN DUN DUN!_

What is going on? Why is that robot abducting Keef? What could it be after? And why did I go back and edit two chapters to include Keef in the PITS, when he doesn't really add much to it and I had already decided to take him out? Find out soon! (Except for that last part which is purely artistic whim!) Also, the next chapter will have Zim, along with some other interesting things. ;-)


	7. CH 6: Unexpected Agony

A shorter chapter; originally this and the next chapter were supposed to be one, but I split it up for length. Anyway, hope you enjoy. There's some Zim in this chapter...though admittedly not that much.

Also, completely random question--does anybody know if Gretchen ever actually talks in the entire series? If so, what does she sound like? She looks like she would talk with a lisp or something...I just have some other stories in mind that would involve her, and I was kind of curious. Thanks to anyone who can help with that, and of course, all readers and reviewers. :-D

* * *

Chapter Six  
Unexpected Pain

I woke up the next morning, Gaz pounding on the door and my alarm clock beeping, feeling miserable without quite remembering why. When the events of the previous day came back to me--along with the realization that I would have to deal with the aftermath today--I had to drag myself out of bed to get dressed feeling thoroughly depressed. My stomach seemed to contain the strange combination of a dead weight of misery along with a pile of hissing, angry snakes whenever I thought of Zim, giant robots or the S.E.J.I. Club.

I hoped that skool might be canceled that day, but somehow the Skool Board didn't seem to think a giant robot attack was a good enough excuse for something as extreme as _that_. Admittedly the building was already almost repaired--as was often the case when Zim managed to get me blamed for mass destruction, Dad had dedicated his resources to a quick recovery, so there were already construction workers outside the skool, the wall half-fixed. I had to stop and marvel at how quickly people were able to fix problems, as long as doing so promised to complicate my life.

So I dragged myself into skool just a few minutes before the bell was set to ring, went to my locker and traded in the contents of my bulging backpack for all the books I had left there the previous day. As I slammed the door closed I jumped--standing directly behind it was a certain ugly, green face that had apparently been waiting beside me for the last several minutes, plastered with a triumphant grin that made my blood boil.

"Ah, good morning, _Dib,"_ Zim sneered, his fake human eyes looking me up and down for a moment. "GIR tells me you were on the news last night."

I let out a low growl but chose not to answer. Instead I spun around on the balls of my feet and stormed away. Zim, apparently gleeful at his ability to antagonize me, followed.

"So how _did _your little _club _meeting go yesterday?" he asked sweetly, following behind me. "From what the news-hyuman reported, it sounds as if something you and your little _club-mates_ tried to do didn't quite go as planned..."

I spun around to face him again, glaring angrily. "Don't try to play innocent with me, Zim! I know _you_ sent that robot to mess up our meeting!"

Zim raised an eyebrow. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about," he said delicately, turning away from me. Then, in a haughtier tone, his voice rising in his usual dramatic way, "I hardly see why I would _have_ to destroy your chances to defeat me. You seem perfectly able to do it yourself, with your stupid...stupid...stupid...ness, of...stupid!"

Yeah, I know, he can only seem to manage it for so long before he ruins it, eh?

Feeling my face contort with anger, I stopped at the water fountain and bent down to get a drink; he stayed behind me, and then bent down slightly, whispering his mocking words directly into my ear. "But don't worry, if you and your fellow human worm-monkeys _do_ find some way to successfully fight the amazing ZIM!, I will put a stop to you. Nothing you do can defeat my plans, Dib. No matter how many of your fellow dirt...er...cows you gather, I will prove to still be _amazing!"_

I paused, rose my hand slightly away from the fountain, though I left my hand on the button, letting water squirt down into the drain. Zim, pleased to apparently have caught my attention, continued, "Soon you will realize the foolishness of trying to fight me, Dib. Soon, when I am ruling this world with my mighty rulingness, you will see how futile it was, and you will--"

I pressed my finger down on the water tap. It squirted under the pressure, sending a stream of liquid right onto Zim's face.

"Agh!" he cried, as his green Irken flesh began to burn. He jumped back and ran down the hallway, screaming, sending clouds of steam past the curious faces that turned to watch him. I chuckled under my breath, feeling happy for the first time all day.

"Huh...that was weird," someone said to my left. I jumped again; Peggy had come up beside the water fountain when I wasn't looking, her brother standing sullenly beside her. She grinned as I looked up at her, apparently just noticing I was there. "Hey, Dibbers! Did you get my e-mail last night?"

"Er...yeah," I said slowly, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. "Um--how did you get my e-mail address, anyway?"

"Oh, it wasn't hard--it just took a couple hours of hacking!" she said, giving one of her unnaturally broad grins and a tinkling little laugh. "So, I didn't get your response, though--anything happen at the end of the meeting?"

"Er...something," I grumbled, shoving my hands into my pockets. "Zim tried to break up it up."

"Zim?" she frowned, confused. "_Oh..._you mean the kid with the skin condition?"

"He's an alien!" I said, a bit too shrilly; the crowds in the hall turned to stare at _me_ now. I lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. "He sent this giant robot, it busted up half the street outside, you must have seen the damage--"

"Oh, is that why there are all those construction workers out there? Huh," Peggy said, looking off thoughtfully. She shook her head and seemed to return to earth. "So, anyway, when's the next PITS meeting? Maybe we could try again this afternoon?" She sounded excited at the prospect. Rodger grimaced, shooting me a quick glare.

"I don't think so," I grumbled. Despite my previous decision to plan another meeting quickly to revenge myself on Zim, somehow I felt my enthusiasm wane with another dose of Peggy's chipperness. "The principle might not even want us to keep doing it, we did destroy half the skool...but then again," I added thoughtfully, "the chess club's done that half a dozen times..."

I considered that for a moment, when all of a sudden I felt something push me from behind--Torque Smackey had just lumbered down the hallway, lifting a dumbbell in one hand and, not being one to stop and ask nicely, pushing people out of his way roughly with the other. I let out a cry and fell forward onto Peggy, who let out a cry and fell down against the lockers before the two of us crumbled into a confused pile on the floor. Torque stalked past, not even seeming to notice.

"Ah--"

"Oh!"

I found myself in the rather awkward position of laying right on top of Peggy; feeling my face burn, I quickly tried to unscramble my arms and legs from her, giving a small, nervous laugh to try to hide my embarrassment. Meanwhile, Rodger's eyes had suddenly gone wide, then narrowed angrily into a glare--instead of stopping to help me and Peggy untangle ourselves, he suddenly spun around and began to storm off, right after Torque. Peggy, more or less ignoring our tangle limbs, looked terrified.

"Oh--Rodger, _don't!"_

Rodger seemed not to have heard her--Torque (who had to be at least twice times Rodger's height and three times his width) was now standing and talking to one of his almost-as-huge friends. Rodger stormed right up to him, grabbed the hem of his shirt and tugged several times. Torque turned slowly and looked down from a rather great height onto Rodger's small, furious face.

_"What?" _Torque asked menacingly, squinting down at the tiny kid.

Rodger didn't answer. Instead, he punched Torque in the kneecap.

_"Agh!"_ Torque cried, grabbing his leg and hopping on one foot--from the look of it, the blow had actually hurt. Torque staggered for a moment and then spun around, aiming a punch at Rodger's face, but in a flash Rodger wasn't there--he had leapt into the air and landed right on Torque's arm, bent at a right angle as he lifted his weight. He gave one sudden, powerful kick, hitting Torque right in the side of the head.

Torque froze. Then, as if in slow motion, he fell to the ground with an almighty CRASH. Rodger leapt lightly off him as he staggered, landing on the floor as Torque hit the ground. Torque's friend gaped in astonishment. Rodger gave one last glare and turned to walk back to us.

Once again everybody in the hallway--including me--was gaping, though Rodger seemed not even to notice; he just walked back to where Peggy and I were standing, having finally disentangled ourselves. Peggy suddenly no longer looked cheery, but furious.

"Rodger!" She sounded scandalized. "You shouldn't have done that!"

"He pushed you down!" Rodger said indignantly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"That's not the point! You could have seriously hurt him!"

Rodger crossed his arms indifferently. "He's only unconscious. He'll survive," he said, sounding sullen.

I looked over at Torque; a few kids were surrounding him, a few poking him as though trying to figure out if he was alive. I let out a long whistle. "Wow, Rodger...remind me to introduce you to my sister, I think the two of you'll have a lot in common," I muttered.

The bell rang. Peggy, startled, stopped bickering with Rodger, looking confused for a moment. Then she turned back to me, suddenly smiling broadly again. "Well, gotta get to class! See ya later!"

She waved and ran off; Rodger followed, still looking defiant. I stood there for a moment, gazing after them, then turned to gaze at Torque's still-unconscious body before slowly making my way to Ms. Bitters' class.


	8. CH 7: Lunchtime

Hello again. A somewhat interesting chapter ahead, and then more eventually, though I'll have to sit down and redo my plans for this story; some things need to be added to my original outline. I might even add a prologue, though I need to figure out exactly where this story is going before I can figure that out. And also, despite being an interesting idea, I must deny Chaous' theory that Peggy is an Irken. After Tak, it'd just be silly if someone _else_ came to try to steal Zim's job. Though, as we'll see in later chapters, there may be other interesting things about her and Rodger worth noting...

And for those interested, I recently posted a one-shot story called "A Weekend at EARL's." Please read and review that after this; specifically I'd like to know if anybody thinks its worth expanding?

* * *

Chapter Seven  
Lunchtime

"...Billy?"

"Here."

"Brian?"

"Here."

"Carl?"

No answer; Ms. Bitters looked up, her serpentine body twisting towards Carl's empty seat. She hissed softly, then returned to her roll.

"Dib?"

"Here," I said through gritted teeth; my head was turned to the other side of the room, where Zim was sitting. Zim, too, was turned to me, glaring right back.

"Flan?"

"Here..."

Zim's eyes narrowed slightly, and I narrowed mine to copy him. This was our typical classroom activity; there wasn't really much of a point paying attention, Ms. Bitters never actually taught us anything important. I made it my point to just write as many horrible things as I could think of whenever we had a test or a term paper. I was tied with Zita for being best student in the class; her papers were always about how crazy I am.

"...Keef?"

Again there was no answer; I allowed my eyes to flick slightly away from Zim's for a moment to look around the class. Keef had been the third or fourth absence today; and indeed, as I looked around the class seemed distinctly less crowded than usual. Usually that meant that a bunch of kids had planned a mass game of hooky, though usually when that happened he, along with Zim and I, were the only ones out of the loop. Long, horrible days of the three of us, locked alone in a room with Ms. Bitters for hours on end still haunted my memories.

Ms. Bitters finished with the roll call--two more people were absent after Keef--and, after finding that Zita was present, she began her lecture of the day, which was about the history of doom. Soon everybody was passing notes, chatting behind their hands, or doodling crude cariactures. (Aki, I saw out of the corner of my eye, was doing one of me in a straitjacket.) Zim and I, however, continued merely to glare.

_I know it was you who sent that robot, Zim, _I thought viciously, balling my hand into a fist under the desk. _And I will find a way to keep you from ruining the next S.E.J.I meeting if it's the last thing I do!_

Figuring out how, though, was proving to be difficult.

"...and so that, class, is how my sister lost the election," Ms. Bitters concluded, just as the lunch bell rang, giving everyone the signal to jump out of their seats and run for the door.

By the time I joined the lunch line, most of the skool was already there, so I wound up last in the very long line. Zim was about a half-dozen places in front of me, squirming uneasily; though human food made him violently ill, it never seemed to occur to him to pack his own lunch.

Well, to be fair, the same was true of most people...

I got my tray of...something and went to sit in my usual seat, a table which was usually empty of more than a few people, who I made a point of sitting a bit away from. Zim was sitting a few tables away, also alone; I watched as he gave his meatloaf a short poke with his fork, then drew back with a cry when it bit off the prongs. I snickered, then heard a SPLAT sound--my own food had slithered off of my tray and splattered onto the floor, and was now busy trying to sneak across the room. Scowling, I put my head in my hand and just went back to watching Zim.

_"GUESS WHO!"_

_"Agh!"_

I jumped; as I did my hand tightened around the milk carton I was holding, which burst open, its contents flying with me into the air. My body hit the seat again; the milk flew up, then came down again right on top of my head. Cold but slightly curdled milk ran down my hair, dripping slowly off my forehead onto my lap.

"Oh...heh-heh...sorry," Peggy said, taking the seat across the table from me. She reached for a napkin and leaned across the table. "Here, let me help you--"

"No, I got it," I said, a bit unkindly, pushing her hand away; I scrubbed my hair with my own napkin, then shook my wet head to send it back into its correct shape. I sent Peggy a dark look that she seemed not to notice, though it made Roger, who had taken the seat beside her, glare at me even harder than usual.

"So, how ya doin'?" she asked, stabbing her fork into her meatloaf before it had a chance to get away. It let out a little shriek as she began to cut it up to eat.

"Not well," I said, looking away; Zim was now engaged in a wrestling match with his vegetables, and a few kids were watching with mild interest. "Actually I've been pretty crummy, ever since the giant robot attacked the skool yesterday."

"Giant robot," Rodger scoffed, rolling his eyes. "That's crazy."

"It is not crazy!" I said, jumping up defensively. "It was on the news last night!"

"Well, it--"

"Oh, I _love food!_" Peggy cried suddenly, having taken her first bite of struggling meatloaf.

I froze; indeed, several people sitting nearby turned to her, looking startled. That was a statement I couldn't recall anybody having ever made in the skool cafeteria before. Peggy seemed not to have noticed; she took out a water bottle, took a quick swig and turned to me as she began to pick at her food again. "So, do you know anything else about this robot you saw?"

"Not much," I said, drawing my laptop out of my backpack and opening up the information I had managed to gather. "But from what I can decode of its programming, it's alien--it looks a lot like the writing I usually see on Zim's equipment. And I did a scan on the material it's made of, it's a weird alloy--I've got the results up here--"

"Oh," said Peggy, leaning across the table and looking at the screen. "Element 133. But that's not found on Earth, that's only ever been discovered in asteroids and things."

"It contains weird elements, one's Element 133, it's only been found in--wait, wha?" I looked up, startled; I had resolutely ignored her until hearing the echo in our words. "How did you know that?"

"Oh," Peggy said, giving a little, almost nervous, laugh. "I'm kind of a science geek...so anyway, how did you get these results, you'd need a top-quality scanner to get something like this--"

"Yeah, I have one at home--made it out of an old microwave, actually--"

"Wow! That's really cool, that must have been really hard--"

"Oh, no, I just needed a few spare parts my dad wasn't using--"

Rodger gave Peggy a hard look and crossed his arms sullenly; he didn't seem to like Peggy having sided with me over him. Peggy gave a sigh and took another happy bite of her food. "I really love science," she said. "Oh! You know what I _really_ love? That show on Channel 6, _Probing the Membrane of Science,_ have you ever seen it?"

"Oh, yeah. He's my dad," I added offhandedly, taking a sip of milk.

Peggy froze for a moment. Then she screamed "SHUT UP!"

I jumped again, and once again milk splattered all over me, this time running all down my shirt. Peggy did not seem to notice, but leaned forward, talking excitedly. "Oh my gosh, that is so cool I _love_ Professor Membrane his show is so amazing I remember that one episode where he was talking about the mitochondrial DNA and all and--"

She blathered for another few minutes. This wasn't completely uncommon--I had met some of Dad's more enthusiastic fans before, and though they were usually nerdy science kids, any tiny shred of popularity I ever had ever managed to gather had usually come from him--though, as in all other things, Peggy seemed more enthusiastic about this than any normal person.

"So, does that mean you're Dib Membrane, then?" she asked, finally ending her long monologue.

"What?" I shook my head, having stopped listening several minutes before. "Oh, no--everybody thinks that, but Membrane is my dad's _first_ name. My last name is--"

"Move over," a voice said from behind me, and I suddenly found myself shoved onto the floor. Scowling, I looked up to see Gaz taking the seat next to where I had been sitting, right across from Rodger. She immediately started eating without paying attention to me or the table's other occupants.

Rubbing my shoulder where it had hit the floor and still scowling, I got back in my seat and shot a thumb towards her. "This is my sister Gaz," I said grudgingly.

"Oh, _hey!_ So nice to meet you!" Peggy gushed, extending her hand; Gaz looked up from her plate, with a gape of pure fury and incredulity, before silently returning to her food. Peggy waited another long moment before withdrawing her hand.

"So, Dib and I were just talking about science and stuff, do you like that kind of stuff? I guess you must, being Professor Membrane's daughter and all--so, do you help Dib with all his alien-fighting-science stuff?"

Gaz looked up, froze for a moment, then gave a single shrug. She bent down and returned to her food. Peggy looked like she was going to keep trying to engage her in conversation; realizing how pointless this would be, I quickly cut in. "So, Peggy, about Zim's robot..."

"Oh yeah." Peggy looked across the room over at Zim; he had given up trying to eat his food and was now sitting sullenly, glaring at those around him. "Are you sure _he's _an advanced alien spy trying to dominate humanity? I mean, he just seems sort of..."

Her voice trailed off. Zim's food attacked again. He let out a startled yell and fell to the floor, screaming as he landed in a puddle of spilt milk.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," I muttered. "But yes, I'm sure! I've seen him without his disguise, I've been inside his base, I've been in his spaceship--I have!" I said angrily, as Rodger rolled his eyes. "Gaz's seen him too--haven't you, Gaz?!"

Again she just shrugged. I glared in annoyance.

The bell rang. Peggy, Rodger and I got up to put away our trays. Gaz stayed behind to finish eating--no teacher would dare try to punish Gaz, especially not the obsessively kind Mr. Elliot. I was telling Peggy everything I could think of about Zim, while Rodger stood by impatiently, drumming his foot on the floor.

"And his species are called Irkens, and their leaders are just the tallest members of their species, they might have some sort of council or something, I know there's at least two--Zim never eats food because it burns him, and he can't touch water either, unless he remembers to put glue over his skin to block it, but he forgets a lot so there's kind of a fifty-fifty chance of that on any given day--"

"Can we get a move on?" Rodger growled, glancing up at the clock for the tenth time; the cafeteria was almost empty, everybody was chatting and heading back to class. "We're going to be late for study hall."

"Just a--well, you know what, Rodg? Just head on ahead without me, I'll be there in a sec--oh, and take my stuff for me, 'kay?"

Rodger's face fell in shock as Peggy threw her backpack into his arms, nearly sending him falling to the floor. For a moment he looked too stunned to move, but then he shot one last venomous glance at me, turned and vanished into the hallway.

"You two have the same class?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah...Rodger skipped a couple of grades," Peggy said with an offhanded motion. "And don't let him bother you, he's really very sweet, he's just a bit...overprotective. I'm sure you're the same way about your sister."

"Well, Gaz doesn't usually need protecting," I muttered.

Peggy gave another of her overly-sweet little laughs. When she spoke, however, she was suddenly very businesslike. "Well, anyway, about that Zim kid and this robot--"

"Right," I said. "Well, unfortunately it escaped, which means he'll probably send it after us again if he finds out about the next S.E.J.I. meeting. We'll have to find a way to hold them in secret."

"Hmm," Peggy said. "Yes, I suppose that's for the best, then." She gave another of her huge, sugary smiles. "Anyway. I better get to class before the bell rings. I'll see you later, then?"

I started to say "Yeah," but before I could get the whole word out, she suddenly bent down and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

"GAH!" I yelled, stumbling backwards; Peggy didn't seem to notice. She had already spun around and was skipping out of the cafeteria in the direction Rodger had gone. I was left standing there, slightly stunned.

"Wow...that was unexpected."

"GAH!" I yelled again, and this time fell onto the ground--Gaz had apparently managed to move silently behind me, her Game Slave 2 in hand but with her eyebrow cocked slightly. I glared up at her as I climbed back to my feet.

"Is that chipper little weirdo your new _girlfriend?"_ she asked. Her voice wasn't so much mocking as filled with disdain.

"What? No! She's just--well, overly friendly, for one," I said, straightening out my coat and staring off after her. My hand went unconsciously to my cheek where she had kissed it.

"You're _blushing_," Gaz said simply, eyes widening as if in shock.

"What? No I'm not!" I objected, though even as I said this I could feel my cheeks growing hotter and hotter.

Gaz gave another apathetic shrug. "Whatever. This changes a lot of theories I had about you, though."

She walked past me roughly and out of the cafeteria towards Mr. Elliot's class. I stood there for a moment, the last kid in the room, momentarily taken aback. "Wait--what kind of theories?!" I demanded, chasing off after Gaz down the hall.

* * *

No, I have no plans to change this story's genre to "Romance." There will be shipping only to the degree that it allows Dib to feel horribly awkward.

And oh, I have so much awkwardness planned for him, too. Hee-hee-hee. ):-D


	9. CH 8: Gretchen, Goo and Grudge

Hello, and welcome to Chapter Eight of this story!

Now, some of my more observant readers who (unlike me) can keep track of these sorts of things may be wondering, "Didn't this story already have a Chapter Eight?" Er...yeah. I decided to take this story in a different direction, change some things from my original plan, so that chapter has been deleted. That whole thing with the giant robots in Dib's neighborhood never happened. It was a bit painful--30 hits just disappeared into nothingness!--and my constant changes are making the reviews kind of all confused, but, well, this is my first long and serious story so I'm still kind of learning. This chapter takes place immediately after the lunchroom thing with Peggy and Rodger.

Also, I recently put up a one-shot called "Just Perfect" that ties into this story, though either one can be read without the other. But go read it anyway, because...you should. Also, as the first person to review that story, Invaderzimfannumber1 gets to be (kind of) included in this chapter; see if you can spot where. I also touched up a few of the earlier chapters of this story, but not very much. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

(Dang my author's notes are too long...)

* * *

Chapter Eight  
Gretchen, Goo and Grudge

It can be debated whether or not Gaz _meant_ for me to be late getting back to class. After I caught up with her we quarrelled all the way to Mr. Elliott's room, me so caught up in defending myself from her accusations that I completely didn't realize that I was supposed to be heading for my own class. In any event, I raced down the nearly deserted hallways a few minutes later, gazing up every time I passed a clock, hoping I could just make it--

_RIIIIING._

I threw open the door, but it was too late--Ms. Bitters and the rest of the class all turned to face me as I entered, panting. "You're late, Dib," Ms. Bitters said, glaring. "Take your seat now or it's another trip to the Pain Machine for you."

Still gasping for air, I slumped over towards my desk. Zim smirked as I walked by. Then let out a cry of pain as my boot tip hit his shin. I couldn't help but grin and chuckle even as I could feel him glaring at my back.

"Now, class, due to new Skool Board regulations about the proper use of rabid wolverines, I have had to return last week's Science experiment to the Animal Control units," Ms. Bitters began, sounding thoroughly displeased. I let out a sigh of relief, unconsciously rubbing the set of bite marks on my side. "And so, instead of that, we will be using today's Science class to learn how to manufacture worthless, disgusting green sludge."

"Why?" I blurted out without thinking.

Ms. Bitters turned, gave me a deadpan look, then turned back to the class without answering. "Anyway, I will be breaking you up into pairs for the day." She picked up the roll sheet and began picking names randomly without looking up. "Aki, you'll be with...Flan. Brian, you're with...Melvin. Poonchy, you're with Keef--"

"But Keef's not here!"

"_Silence!_ The Letter M, you're with Alex..."

I crossed my fingers, shooting a look at Zim from across the room, who likewise was looking around nervously. _Please not Zim,_ I prayed, _Anyone but Zim..._

"Dib, you're with..."

I tightened my fingers' grip on each other and felt my eyeball twitch.

"...Gretchen."

Gretchen let out a little squeak, probably apprehension at being paired with 'the crazy kid,' but I let out a sigh of relief. "And Zim, you're with Zita," Ms. Bitters completed, causing Zim to jump slightly and Zita to rise angrily to her feet.

"What? Why do I have to be with _Zim_?!"

"You're both at the bottom of the list," Ms. Bitters said with an apathetic shrug. Zita scowled. Zim scowled right back in return.

"Now everyone get with your partners and collect the materials from the back of the class near the sink."

"What are we supposed to do, exactly?" someone called.

"Quiet!" Ms. Bitters snapped, leaning back in her chair and taking out a book called _Pool of Horrors_. I had a strong feeling she would be incommunicado for the rest of the lesson.

As everyone got up and began to join off into their groups, I picked up my backpack and slouched over to the sink, collecting the materials Ms. Bitters had left out on the counter, then headed over to Gretchen, plopping down into the seat beside her and putting the stuff down in front of me. She surveyed me nervously. "Hey," I said, a bit sullenly.

"Hello, Dib," she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She smiled nervously at me, a kind but somewhat horrifying sight. Gretchen was usually a little nicer to me than most of the other kids, though she always seemed a bit jumpy.

I looked around the room. "So, do you actually want to _do_ the assignment?" I asked. Just as nobody bothered to listen to Ms. Bitters' lectures, only about half of us ever felt the need to do any of her assignments; most of the kids around us were just sitting with their friends talking or throwing paper airplanes across the room at each other.

"Um, I guess," Gretchen said, a bit apprehensively. "But Ms. Bitters didn't leave any instructions," she murmured, frowning at all the things before us. We weren't the only ones who had noticed this, either; everybody who was bothering with the assignment at all were looking dully at their things, oblivious to what exactly we were supposed to be doing.

"Well, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out," I said, picking up a bottle and reading the label. "Let me see..."

Fifteen minutes later, the half of the class that had been trying to do the experiment had been whittled down to less than a quarter as most of the kids gave up and went to chat with everybody else. Of the few pairs still working, Gretchen and I seemed to be doing the best; by carefully reading each of the labels I had managed to more-or-less figure out what we were supposed to be doing, and Gretchen watched, a bit awed, as I managed to concoct a slimy, disgusting green substance in the measuring cup we were working in.

"Wow...that's really good, Dib," Gretchen said. "Ours looks better than anyone else's."

That was true; across the room, Alex and the Letter M had managed to make something, but their sludge was so thick that it had quickly solidified into what looked like a sticky green rock. They now seemed to have given up like everybody else and were tossing it back and forth across the table in a game of desultory game of catch. The only other pair still working were Zita and Zim--or rather, Zim. Out of the entire class, Zita seemed to be the most audacious in ignoring Ms. Bitters instructions, to the point that she had taken out her cell phone and was having a lively conversation on it while her partner worked. Usually Zita was pretty attentive to her skool work--trying to maintain her position as Ms. Bitters favorite student--but she seemed to feel she didn't need to bother now, since Zim was working hard on the project alone. Zim was bent over, trying to work on his sludge, casting furious glares from Zita to me. I knew he was only still working because he saw that I was succeeding where he was not.

"Thanks," I said, smiling up at Gretchen, then looking back at the sludge and pouring one final ingredient to make it nice and runny. I put it down and sighed. "Assuming Ms. Bitters actually bothers to check our work today, I think we'll pass."

"Well, it's worthless, disgusting and green. That seems to fulfill the requirements."

I laughed. Gretchen blushed and looked away. And then something exploded.

_BLUCH!_

"Agh!"

_"Agh!"_

I spun around. I caught sight of Zim just in time to see the briefest flicker as one of his PAK legs vanished from sight. Apparently, he had done something to his beaker of slime--probably used the PAK leg's laser to heat it, I thought--and it had exploded in his hand, sending glass and sludge flying. Zita had been hit, though she seemed unhurt--instead she was shrieking at the sight of her ruined shirt and trying desperately to comb the slime out of her hair with her fingers. Zim, however, had received the bulk of the mess: the green slime was all over his clothes and already-green face, and, either because he had heated it too much or just because of his natural aversion to Earth substances, it was burning him rather badly. He let out a scream and fell to the floor, crying out and clawing at his face as steam and smoke issued from his body.

At the sight of him rolling around on the floor, covered in slime and bits of broken glass, I couldn't help but let out a harsh, barklike laugh. He rolled over onto his side, stopped, and then looked up at me, glaring daggers. He rose shakily to his feet, still smoking a little, and then slowly wiped the slime off of his face with one gloved claw. Then, in a sudden movement, he leaned back and threw it at me from across the room.

_SPLAT!_

"Agh!"

I fell back, falling out of my chair, suddenly blinded by the warm green slime all over my face. The whole class laughed, except for Gretchen, who had jumped down to try to help me up, but I pushed her roughly aside, feeling anger course through my entire body. Without a word I lunged, grabbed my own beaker of slime, ran and splashed the entire contents towards Zim.

"Agh!"

He suddenly grabbed Zita and held her out in front of him like a human shield; she shrieked as the sludge hit her instead of Zim. I felt my eyes go wide as her face twisted into a furious grimace, and, just like Zim, she grabbed a handful of sludge from her shirt and threw it at me. I ducked, which unfortunately caused her blow to go flying and hit Gretchen, who stumbled backwards into Tae, knocking him out of his chair and getting sludge on both of them--

_"SLUDGE FIGHT!"_

I don't know who gave the command, but it was quickly obeyed. I threw myself under a desk as sludge-globs went flying through the air, kids laughing or screaming as they threw and got hit and dodged--

"What is going on here?!"

Ms. Bitters had finally looked up from her book long enough to notice us; in a flash she had swept over her desk to stand in the middle of the room, glaring, her arms crossed.

Everybody froze. A glob of sludge that had already been in the air dropped down and splattered on her face. Her lip curled into a growl.

_"ZIM! DIB!"_

I jumped, bumping my head painfully into the desk I was using for shelter; I cursed and slowly crawled out of my hiding place, stepping over several of my slimy classmates who had either fallen or slipped onto the floor. Zim, hiding near the bookshelf across the room, shot me a look, then looked fearfully back at Ms. Bitters.

"You two will stay after class today to clean up this horrible mess. And you both fail the assignment for the day."

"What?!" I cried, looking around the room at the gigantic mess--the sludge was all over the walls, desks and ceiling. "But Ms. Bitters--"

"_Silence!"_

I crossed my arms, glaring at the floor. Zim shot me a look. I shot it right back at him.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Needless to say, cleaning the mess up wasn't fun.

For one, in the two hours between the sludge fight and our detention, the sludge had had a chance to dry, so that now it was less of a sludge than a crust. After trying desperately with a sponge, I had switched to a math compass and found the stabbing point infinitely more helpful, using it like a pickaxe on the dried-up globs and puddles.

Even less pleasant than the work was the company.

"I cannot _believe_that you got me stuck doing this, Dib-stink!" Zim screamed for the tenth time, on his hands and knees on the floor, scrubbing desperately with a sponge. I had made a note not to let him see my compass trick.

I turned to glare down at him. I was standing precariously on the top of a tall ladder with a bucket of water at my side, trying to clean the ceiling panels. The ladder shook dangerously ever time that I moved, but I was smart enough not to ask Zim to held steady it for me. "_I _got you stuck here?! _I_didn't ask you to throw a handful of alien slime at me, Zim!"

"Ha! This inferior _hyuman_ slime is nothing compared to the slime my people could create! If I had my lab equipment with me now, in five minutes time I could manufacture a slime _one hundred times superior to this!" _he screeched, gesturing to the mess before him.

I paused. "...You realize we're arguing about which species can create the better slime, right?"

"And I'm winning!"

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Are not! You couldn't--whoa--"

The ladder tipped; I let out a cry, windmilling my arms wildly to try to steady myself, but the leg of the ladder suddenly got caught on a glob of dried sludge, and I fell with a cry.

I hit the floor, hard. The bucket of water followed a moment later, splashing down on my head.

"Ha HA!" Zim cried, pointing at me triumphantly. "VICTORY IS MINE!"

"What?! No it's not--"

But he wasn't listening; he had turned and ran out of the room before I could recover enough to object.

"ZIM! Get back here!" I screamed, running towards the door after him, but suddenly jumped as Ms. Bitters materialized out of the wall in front of me. (Yeah, I'm still working out how she does that. So far efforts to run tests on her have proven futile.)

"Dib! Where do you think you're going? This mess isn't going to clean itself, you know."

"But Zim! He was supposed to be helping me, and he ran out--"

"No excuses! Get back to work!"

"But--"

"_NOW!_"

I gaped in astonishment. Then I slowly went back into the room to finish cleaning the mess, alone, Ms. Bitters glaring after me as I went.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It was nearly 6 o'clock before I got home, and the first thing I did was go straight to my computer.

_Dear Peggy,_

_Club meeting tomorrow at 4:00. Can we use your house? Zim's already attacked us at the skool and Gaz probably wouldn't like it if we had it at my house. If not we'll just meet at skool again, but I'd like to avoid it. Also, do you by any chance know how to contact Jack? I can just tell Keef in class tomorrow._

_See you soon._

_--Dib_

I sent the message and sat glaring at my computer. I would have my revenge on Zim.

And I already had a plan how to do it.

* * *

_Pool of Horrors_ is by Invaderzimfannumber1. Congratulations on winning my little contest. (And I promise I'll get to reading the rest of your stories soon. :-)

Chapter Nine will be up...soon! Ish. The next few chapters will get more interesting. GIR will be coming in soon. :-D


	10. CH 9: Field Trip

Yay! This update came a lot quicker than usual, didn't it? Though it is shorter...I didn't get many reviews for the new chapter eight, so my low self-esteem demanded I try again. Plus I've been inspired, I even have a good chunk of the next chapter written, so maybe I can do another update soon. And I have plotbunnies hopping around in my skull, but I am trying to suppress them for now.

Anyway, if you missed the last update, look back at the last chapter before reading this one. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

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Chapter Nine  
Field Trip

_. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _

_Dear Dib, ;-)_

_Sorry, our place is no good :-(, so I guess we'll have the meeting at skool. I'll try to find Jack at some point in the day to tell him. See you soon! :-D_

_Love,  
Peggy_

_. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _

I scowled slightly, then sighed. Well, as long as Zim didn't know about the meeting, it would hopefully be safe.

I signed off my computer, got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. Gaz was already eating a bowl of Count Cocofang's, while Dad was hidden behind his morning paper with a cup of coffee, the usual routine whenever he was home in the morning.

"Ah-ha!" he cried, shaking the paper as I entered the room. "My latest project just made the front page, Dib! Isn't that great?"

"Uh, sure Dad," I said, sitting down to pour myself the rest of the Cocofang's. It wasn't quite as exciting as it would have been, since Dad had been in the paper only a week ago for his newest cancer cure.

"Ah, the world is lucky to have me, isn't it?" Dad mused. "You know, Dib, if you were to get involved in _real science_ again, you could--"

The phone rang. I sighed; Dad got up to answer it, sparing me another lecture. I poured some milk and got started with my cereal.

"What?" I heard Dad call from the next room. "What? That's terrible! Oh, what a mess that is! Yes...yes, I'll be right down there."

He hung up the phone and came into the kitchen; though very little of his face was visible, I could tell he looked annoyed. "What's up, Dad?" I asked, frowning, as he crossed the room to pour the remainder of his coffee into the sink.

"What? Oh, that was NASAPLACE. It seems that Patrick and Debra O'Sullivan have disappeared..."

"Who?"

"Oh, just some colleagues of mine, a married couple. But they were working on a very important project, and now they've suddenly vanished...now they need to rush down there and finish Patrick's project for them. As if I didn't have enough to do..."

He vanished into the basement for a moment, reappearing with a briefcase bulging with papers. "I have to go out of town for a few days," he said, appearing uncharacteristically frazzled. "You kids be good, alright?"

"Okay, Dad."

"Whatever."

Dad swooped out of the room. I heard the front door open and shut. I took a slow bite of my cereal. "Hey, Gaz? Have we ever met the O'Sullivans before?"

"I don't think so," Gaz said apathetically. "Why?"

"I don't know, for some reason that name just seems familiar..."

I thought for a moment, then gave up and finished my cereal.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"So that's my plan, Gaz! What do you think?"

"I _think _I need to ask Zim to surgically remove your voice box again. I liked it better when you just mooed."

I scowled. In the distance I saw the skool building come into view, the yard already filled with kids waiting for the first bell to ring. Gaz's head remained down, her eyes glued to her Game Slave, somehow managing to walk perfectly without ever looking up.

"So, will your _girlfriend_ be at this meeting of yours?" she asked, her eyes flickering over to me before vanishing again from sight.

"_She's not my girlfriend!_ She's peppy and happy and annoying and cute and I don't mean that last one as a compliment! Quit saying that!"

"You're blushing again."

"_I AM NOT!_"

She must have been enjoying this, but she had always had a good poker face; she looked completely expressionless as we walked through the skoolyard gates. Her eyes flickered up from her Game Slave again for a fraction of a second, and she said, "Alright, fine, Dib. I don't think she's your girlfriend."

"Thank you!"

"Yeah, cuz right now, she's over there chatting up Zim."

"_What?!_"

Gaz pointed without looking up. Zim was standing on the front stoop of the skool, gestaculating in his usual melodramatic way. Peggy was sitting on the steps below him, looking up with her usual expression of polite curiosity. Rodger, I noted, was nowhere to be seen.

"What the--"

I stormed through the yard, leaving Gaz behind (no doubt to watch the show from afar) and rushed over to Zim and Peggy.

"--completely normal hyuman child-beast! _What are you implying?!_" Zim was screeching, so loudly that several people had stopped to stare.

Peggy opened her mouth to respond, but I got there before she could.

"Peggy! What's going on here?!" I demanded, looking up momentarily to glare at Zim, my hands balling into fists. I still had bits of dried-up slime caught between my fingernails.

"Ah-ha!" he cried, pointing at me. "I should have known you would be behind this, Dib! Sending your little hyuman girl-slaves to come and make unfounded accusations about _Zim!_"

"I was just asking--" Peggy began, but Zim cut her off.

"I suppose this is a member of your little _club_, Dib?" he sneered, glaring from her to me.

I smiled. "As a matter of fact she is, Zim! And we've got more people, too!"

Peggy nodded. "Five!" she said cheerfully. "Well...counting the two of us..."

"And soon we'll have the whole skool knowing about you and your species, Zim! And then the whole city! And then the country! And then the world! And then the...uh...universe!"

He raised a non-existent eyebrow. "But most of the universe already knows--"

"Shut up!" And I grabbed Peggy's hand and dragged her away across the skoolyard, as Zim shouting meaningless threats after us along with reassurances to everybody watching that he was, after all, a completely normal hyuman baby-worm.

When we were about halfway across the yard I spun around to face her. "Peggy! What were you doing?! Zim's an alien!"

"Uh, yeah, I know. We've been over that before."

"So why did you just go up to him and start talking?! You're--fraternizing with the enemy!"

"Well, I just wanted to get _his_ side of the story--"

"What?!"

"Well, I was just asking him--you know, why his skin was green and all that, and pointed out some of the evidence you told us about him--asking if he really sent that robot that attacked our first meeting--you know, it's not really fair to make accusations against someone without at least getting their side of the story first."

She looked up at me, nodding sagely. I stared back at her, incredulously, unable to speak for a moment.

The bell rang. "Well, I better go!" Peggy said cheerfully. She hitched up her backpack on her back, then cleared her throat. "Ahem--Dib? Could I, uh...please have my hand back?"

I blinked and looked down. I realized I was still holding her hand from when I had dragged her away from Zim.

"GAH!" I cried, letting go quickly and shaking my hand wildly, trying to remove any residual Peggyness. She just smiled and turned, waving. "Bye! See you at the PITS later!" she called, and then skipped cheerfully away into the building with the other kids.

I gaped after her for another moment. Then I heard Gaz come up from behind me, her Game Slave finally out of sight.

"You were holding--"

"Don't! Say it!" I screamed, feeling my eyeball twitch compulsively.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Keef was absent again, so I couldn't tell him about the meeting plan; I hoped Peggy would find a way to talk to Jack. I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of a meeting with just her and Rodger. Not that Jack was better.

So at 3:45 I ran down the hallway to Room 106, thankfully not meeting any Zim-related resistance this time. I came into the room to once again find the entire club (minus Keef) already assembled. Jack was twitching like he had been before, and Rodger looked as surly as ever; Peggy actually seemed a bit quieter, but she looked up and smiled as I entered.

"Hi Dib!"

"Hey," I said, closing the door and walking over to the table, laying down my hands. "Alright, let's get right to it. Jack."

"_Agh!_" He jumped, looking at me and moved his fingers nervously, looking like an oversized, overweight rat with ADD.

"You know that giant robot that attacked us the other day? Well, Zim sent it; I did a test on it and it's made of extraterrestrial metals. Not that big of a surprise, but now we know. So" I leaned forward, hoping in the back of my mind for the dramatic effect I was picturing in my head, "I say we go on the offensive."

"What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

"I mean that if Zim wants to spy on us, try to figure out our plans, we spy on _him_ and try to figure out _his_ plans." I leaned forward even more, feeling my lips curve into a smile. "We're going on a club field trip."

"A field trip?" Rodger asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Yup. Tonight. We're gonna break into Zim's base," I said, unable to suppress a grin.

* * *

Things are about to get interesting. ):-) Will try to update soon. Until then, please read and review!


	11. CH 10: Break In

...I got nothin' to say here. See after the story for some comments.

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Chapter Ten  
Break-In

"Let's see here..."

I tapped on a few keys on my computer, and a window opened with a live recording of the outside of Zim's house. I smirked. Zim had his whole yard checked constantly for bugs or hidden cameras, but he had never bothered with the houses nearby.

I leaned in closer, pressing a button to bring the camera shot closer, staring in the window. I could see Zim's little robot, bare of his paltry disguise, sitting on the couch with a suckmonkey and laughing uproariously at something on TV. No sign of Zim though. I bit my lip. I had to find out if he was home or not...I could draw him out if absolutely necessary--what little information I had managed to get out of Tak's ship included a few Irken and other alien distress signals, though I was saving them for as long as possible. I had already wasted the Plooskian one with Mr. Dwicky...

Just then Zim walked into the room from the kitchen. I held my breath. He was talking to the little robot...I couldn't hear what they were saying, of course. I needed to learn to read lips...not that either of them had lips, actually. The robot giggled at something, Zim yelled at it, then vanished. A moment later I saw the roof to his house open, and his spaceship shot out, zooming into the sky. Something none of his neighbors ever seemed to notice.

I grinned. But we had to hurry. I dialed a phone number into the computer.

Rodger answered.

"What?" he asked, annoyed.

"Zim's out of his base. Do you have the stuff I asked you to pick up?"

"Yeah, Peggy's getting them now. May I ask, how exactly--"

"You'll see when we get there! Now just meet me at the rendezvous point a.s.a.p., you got it?"

Rodger grumbled and hung up. I closed my laptop, grabbed my backpack and ran for Zim's house.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"The rendezvous point" was beside a tree on the beginning of Zim's street, out of range of his lawn gnomes' sensors. By the time I arrived Peggy and Rodger were already there. Peggy was holding four Bloaty's pizza boxes in her arms.

"You got it all?" I asked her, counting the boxes in her hands.

She nodded. "Three large with pepporoni and extra cheeze, one single-serving with anchovies. Can I ask what it's for?"

"You'll see. Where's Jack?"

"Hiding in the bush," Rodger said, jerking his thumb and rolling his eyes.

The bush suddenly jumped fearfully, and Jack came rolling out of it. _"Eugh!"_

_"Shhh!" _I hissed. "Jack, you have to stop spazzing out every few seconds! This is a dangerous mission we're on!"

"Why we doin' this, anyway?" Jack demanded, eyes searching around wildly. "This could be a trap...FBI...evil mole people after our blood!"

"This is not--wait, you've heard of the vampire mole people too?"

"A-hem," Rodger coughed loudly, eyes half-rolled.

"Oh--right. Don't worry, I've snuck into Zim's house lots of times before. We just have to be careful. Now follow me."

We approached cautiously, our backs against the building on one side of Zim's house. Rodger raised an eyebrow at Zim's base--it was horribly out-of-place, a small, glowing green structure in a vacant lot between two much larger buildings. Peggy looked oddly shrewd as she examined it, while Jack just looked fearful.

"This is a trap," he muttered, shaking from head to foot. "CIA'll get my toenails for sure..."

"The CIA isn't getting any of our toenails, I swear it to you! Now come on."

I edged slowly around the building, peeking out. The lawn gnomes turned slightly, their robotic eyes scanning the area. I took out a small cylindrical device from my pocket, pressed a button, and threw it over Zim's little fence and onto the lawn.

The lawn gnomes all spun around as it landed in the middle of the lawn. They stared at it, their eyes widening. Then there was a blinding flash--the others yelped, Jack shrieked, while the gnomes simply slumped down, their glowing eyes turning dark and still.

The others glanced around, blinking. "What was that?" Rodger asked nervously.

"An electromagnetic pulse," I explained, walking around the building and down the sidewalk to Zim's house. "It won't help for long, though; most of Zim's stuff can repair itself pretty quickly. Come on."

I motioned for them to come. Peggy came first, walking calmly, as though breaking into an alien base was not something all that out of the ordinary for her. Rodger, looking wary, followed a moment later, then a very reluctant Jack, who eyed the immobile lawn gnomes fearfully.

I came to the front door, stopping on the stoop; the others all came up close behind me. "This is breaking and entering, I just want to point that out," Rodger said, still sounding disdainful.

I turned to give him an angry look, my hand on the doorknob. Then I turned to the others. "Everybody ready?"

Peggy smiled. Jack let out a spasm of horror that I chose to interpret as affirmation. I turned back to the door, with its bizarre little men's room sign, took a deep breath, and opened it, walking slowly and carefully into the house.

The little robot was still there, sitting on the couch, eyes completely glazed over as he watched a new episode of _The Scary Monkey Show._ He didn't even look up until we were halfway into the room. He turned up his glowing blue eyes, cocking his head to one side curiously. "_Hiiiiii,_" he said, giving us a little wave.

I looked back at the others. Peggy was smiling and balancing her pizza boxes to return the little wave, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. Jack didn't seem too shocked by the robot's presence either--he seemed to be twitching just as much as always, his eyes darting randomly from it to the pictures on the wall to the furniture all with equal terror. Only Rodger had a look of shock on his face, his jaw hanging open, head turned slightly and frozen in a look of incredulity.

I turned to the robot and forced a little smile and wave. "Hi, Zim's Evil Robot Thingy," I said. "Um, if you don't mind, we're just gonna go down into Zim's labs and poke around at all his evil plans and stuff, okay?"

At any given time, there was about a fifty-fifty chance such a request would work. It didn't this time, though.

"NEVER!" the little robot cried suddenly, jumping off the couch; the others leaped back as the robot's eyes and body suddenly began to glow blood-red, the top of its head opening to reveal a massive laser cannon. "MASTER COMMANDS TO STOP THE BIG-HEAD BOY! YOU MUST NOT PASS!"

I had been expecting this; before it had even finished its sentence I had turned, taken the three large pizza boxes from Peggy, and turned back to the robot, holding the boxes up temptingly. "I have pizza."

The robot's eyes instantly turned blue again, and its weaponry and furious face vanished. "PIZZA!" he screamed, grabbing them from my hands. He threw the boxes, opened, onto the floor, and then began to roll around, laughing crazily and shoving slices into his mouth without any shame.

"Come on," I said, turning to the others and heading towards the kitchen. The others were a few moments behind me; Peggy was watching the robot's giggling show with fascination, while Rodger looked both shocked and horrified as it covered itself in slimy cheeze and sauce, literally stuffing its throat up with the greasy mess.

"Come on!" I repeated.

I led them into the kitchen, and over to the toilet that stood, incongruously, beside the sink. "Okay," I said, climbing over the rim, "now, we got past his robot, but the lower levels could have more defenses." I straightened up, now looking down at the others from the toilet's added height. "We need to be careful. If something goes wrong, we need to--what are you guys staring at?"

The others gaped at me for a long moment. Finally Rodger said, "You're standing in a toilet."

I looked down. "Oh. Yeah. This is the secret elevator to Zim's labs. You just stand here and flush and then you get down into the house's secret lower levels."

There was another long pause, then Rodger spoke again. "We're supposed to stand in a toilet?"

"Just come on! It's never even been used like that...er, I think..."

I had to admit I could see their reluctance, but we had little time to waste, Zim could come back at any moment. Peggy first, then Jack and Rodger, climbed in with me, the four of us squirming and crowded in the toilet bowl. With a great deal of effort I managed to put my hand to the lever. "Okay, here we go."

I flushed. Instantly the bottom of the bowl began to descend. Peggy let out a little cry as we went down, spinning momentarily. I felt the bowl-shaped floor beneath us flatten, changing into a flat surface, and a moment later, we were descending through a long tube on a wall-less elevator down into Zim's labs.

Rodger's look of shock had returned. I grinned at him. "Still believe everything I said was crazy?" I asked sarcastically.

He scowled and gave no response.

I turned back to Peggy, who was still holding the smallest pizza box. I took it from her. "Thanks for buying those, by the way. I promise I'll pay you guys back as soon as I get my next allowance."

"No problem," she said, waving her hand. "But what's that last one for anyway? Giving to the robot on the way back up?"

"What?" I asked, opening the box and taking out a slice. "Oh, no--I just didn't get dinner tonight. _Mmm..._" I said, taking a slow, savoring bite and feeling the anchovies melt in my mouth.

I looked up at their three furious faces and felt the blood drain from my own. "Heh-heh..." I smiled sheepishly, holding out the box. "Want some?"

Rodger glared. Peggy took a piece, eating it with a long moan of enjoyment. Jack took one too, but just eyed it suspiciously, taking only a tiny bite and then coughing it up.

The lift suddenly stopped. I led the others out into Zim's massive main lab. It was a large, dimly-lit room, dominated by computer equipment built into all the walls and numerous sparking and sputtering machines, half-finished for Zim's various plans of world domination and general annoyance.

"Whoa," Jack said, his voice trembling.

"Huh...pretty neat," Peggy said, interested but clearly less awed. "So, what exactly are we doing here?"

"We're just looking around...trying to find out what Zim's latest plan is. Be careful, though. Don't touch--"

"_YAAAH-YAAAH-YAAAH-YAAAH-YAAAH-YAAAH!"_

Jack's body was temporarily aglow in crackling electricity, spasming painfully, before flying into the air and across the room to crash into one of the many computer monitors, which burst open as he hit it, showering him with glass and sparks.

"--anything," I finished lamely, putting my palm to my face.

Peggy ran over to help Jack up. As she did, though, the largest computer monitor in the room, which had been blank, suddenly glowed white for a moment, then settled into a dark background with a red line across the screen.

"Huh? Whuh?" a voice said, coming from everywhere at once. The line on the computer screen jumped into jagged peaks and valleys with its voice.

We all froze. "Who said that?" Rodger asked nervously.

I gulped but didn't answer. The line on the computer screen flickered a few more times, almost like it was blinking at us in confusion.

"Oh. Hey, Dib," Zim's Computer said blearily, before letting out a loud, long yawn. "Er...don't tell Zim I was sleeping, okay? I think I was supposed to be watching the base or...something..." His voice trailed off.

Peggy, busy trying to help a shaken and burnt Jack to his feet, looked at Rodger, who returned the look. I had the same basic reaction, but quickly moved to take advantage of the situation.

"Oh, don't worry, we won't," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "And sorry to wake you up from your nap. So anyway, speaking of Zim, is he here? We were, uh, trying to look for him."

"No we--"

I stepped down on Peggy's foot. She yelped and looked offended, but I continued to smile up at the Computer's bleary face--er, monitor. Whatever.

"Zim? Oh, he's up on the--_aaauuuggghhh_--station," the Computer said, yawning mid-sentence. "Said he'd be up there for a while...up there all yesterday afternoon, too, right after he washed off all of that goo..."

I growled unconsciously--it had taken me _hours_ to get rid of all the goo. I forced my voice to remain pleasant. "Do you by any chance know what he's up to up there?"

"Up to?"

"Yeah, you know...what he's doing? Building a new death-weapon or breeding atomic hamsters or...something?"

"What he's doing? Oh, I don't know...er...wait, no...he did mention something...something about...cows?"

"Cows?"

"No, wait...sorry, he's putting the cow plan on hold for now. No, he's working on something about...robots! Yeah, that was it. Giant robots. Yeah."

"Giant robots?" I raised an eyebrow. "Like the one that attacked our club meeting at skool?"

"He...did mention something about one attacking the skool...I think," the Computer said. He paused, then I heard a noise that sounded strangely like a shrug. "Or something. Something about...Dib-stink and...I think he might have mentioned that annoying Keef kid, dang it, I should have recorded it..." He yawned again.

I frowned. "Don't you remember anything else?"

"Not really. I don't really _listen_ to him all that much when he talks, you know? You know how he is."

I frowned, but could definitely see his logic there. "Well, alright then," I said, somewhat annoyed. I turned to the others and jabbed my head back towards the elevator. "Um...well, we better be going now." We all started to slowly slink towards the exit.

The Computer frowned. Well, obviously he couldn't really frown, but the lights in the room suddenly dimmed slightly, and when he spoke, it was definitely in a "frowning" tone. "Going?"

"Uh...yeah," I said nervously, turning back around to face him--it--whatever. "We, uh...gotta go."

"Er...well" he sounded awkward, "see...I'm not really supposed to _let_you go. Or let you break in in the first place, but...well, Zim would be mad if I let you go." He sounded very annoyed by that fact. "So...yeah. I'm just gonna turn on the security system and go back to bed now, okay?"

"What! No, wait--"

The Computer just yawned, making a weird kind of sleepy lip-smacking noise. "Sorry," he said, sounding fairly sincere. Then a soft moan. "Goodnight."

The main screen went blank. Then all the lights in the room turned blood red.

"This isn't good, is it?" Peggy asked, just as the laser cannons descended from the ceiling.

* * *

Thought I'd leave you with a little suspense. :-) And if there are any other Zim's Computer fans, check out my one-shot "A Weekend at EARL's." I got a really good response from it, so apparently it's pretty good.

Speaking of which, I am _considering_ posting another _Invader Zim_ story up soon, a multi-chapter one, but I'm not sure; I have, literally, more than twenty different story ideas, and while many of them are one-shots or cannot be written at this point for various reasons, I still have several options available. My two top ideas at the moment are "Weekend at EARL's 2: House Party of Doom," or a more serious story, "Death of the Dib," which would deal with Zim in an alternate timeline version of "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy." Anybody have an opinion on this? Keep in mind, again, I may decide not to do either right now, I might decide to do a different plot bunny, I don't know; just wondering what you readers thought? Also, does anybody know a good website to get the episode transcripts, other than ZimWiki? (Specifically the "Bad, Bad, Rubber Piggy" episode, in case I decide to do that story. I really need to get the DVDs...)

Anyway, been writing a lot lately, so the next chapter is already started; will post again fairly soon. Please leave reviews! I haven't been getting as many lately, and I'm totally serious about that bunny thing I said in the summary. And tell your friends about me! My hit count is pitifully low...:-(


	12. CH 11: Break Out

I'm not sure how well this chapter turned out--it's a bit confused, but I hope it came out okay, overall. Either way, please leave a review to let me know, and hope you enjoy.

* * *

Chapter Eleven  
Break Out

_TSSEW TSSEW TSSEW TSSEW TSSEW!_

"_Agh!_"

I dodged and rolled as the laser cannons, descending from the ceiling attached to robotic arms, blasted directly where I had been standing; they moved with me as I dodged, firing in a barrage of blasts that left smoking holes on the floor of Zim's lab. Peggy had let out a cry just as Rodger leapt and pushed her out of the way to safety behind a piece of computer equipment; Jack had run screaming, dodging all the blasts.

"EVERYBODY TO THE ELEVATOR!" I screamed.

I made for the elevator. Then gasped.

The elevator was gone. I looked up and saw it already moving back up into the upper floors of the base. Apparently it was programmed to depart whenever the security system was activated.

Oh no. Zim had finally gotten smart!

"Let's use the stairs!" Peggy cried from somewhere near the wall.

I turned, looking annoyed even as I dodged to the side to avoid a laser blast. "Peggy! This is a high-tech secret alien base, I don't think there are--"

She pressed a button on the wall. A door slid open, revealing a set of metal stairs, rising up through a narrow passageway.

I blinked. _Okay, not that smart, then._ "Everybody to the stairs!" I yelled, pointing.

Peggy was already climbing, followed closely by Rodger, then me, with the injured Jack screaming like a maniac and waddling behind us, the shortest and heaviest of us all.

The stairs, unfortunately, also had security.

As we ran little panels slid open in the wall, small gun turrets poking out on their own little robot arms. I let out a cry and ducked as the first appeared, feeling the burning beam fly right above my head and singe the top of my messy hair. I scrambled up, bent over, jumping from side to side as the guns aimed and fired, racing as fast I could without looking--

"Agh!"

"Oh!"

I accidentally ran into Rodger ahead of me, who fell, sprawling on the steps. He turned to glare at me, then kicked me off of him with unusual strength. "Sorry," I mumbled, climbing shakily to my feet just in time to scream and dive back onto the stairs as another laser fired.

"Guys! Hurry!" Peggy cried from above us, nearing the top of the stairs.

I stood up; Rodger had already run ahead, and I could hear Jack, huffing and puffing, coming up behind me. I scrambled back up to my feet and ran, dodging the lasers that shot out of the walls, occasionally getting grazed or hearing Jack let out a cry below me as he was hit.

Finally I reached the top of the stairs, right behind Rodger and Peggy. Jack dragged himself up right behind me and collapsed; he smelled strongly of burning flesh. Rodger and Peggy, however, were searching the walls frantically. "There's no way out of here!" Rodger said.

"What?"

I looked around. There was a long, transparent tube against one wall--another elevator, but just like the one in Zim's main lab, it seemed to have automatically lifted off once the Computer activated the security system. I looked around, hoping for some sort of door or stairway or something. "Oh, man. How do we get out of here?"

"Uh, problem," Rodger said.

"Yeah, I know, just give me a second--"

"No, I mean _another _problem."

"What?!"

"Gigantic robotic bees!"

"What?!"

Rodger pointed up--high above us, three panels had opened in the walls, and sure enough from them issued three giant, mechanical bees, zooming down towards us with the sounds of mechanical buzzing and the flapping of huge wings.

"DUCK!"

I jumped to the ground as a robot bee flew down and stabbed its metal stinger right where I had been; it wound up embedding it in the floor and getting stuck, buzzing and struggling helplessly to escape. Another aimed for Jack, who screamed and ran around the room, the bee in hot pursuit.

"Jack!" I jumped up and was about to go and help him, when suddenly I heard another scream from the other side of the room, and Rodger cry out, "Peggy!"

I spun around. The third robot-bee had attacked Peggy, its stinger stabbing right into her shoulder. Eyes wide, I ran over to her, but Rodger got there first--he grabbed the bee by the head and--despite it being almost his size and struggling frantically--he threw it through the air. It spun wildly, flapping its wings desperately to control its flight, before crashing into the robot chasing Jack. It knocked both off their course and they crashed into the wall with a blast of flames, collapsing into a broken, burning heap on the floor.

With two bees destroyed and the third still trying helplessly to escape from the floor, Rodger and I both ran over to Peggy, Jack following behind us, panting. She had collapsed up against the wall, holding her shoulder painfully, eyes shining with tears of pain. Rodger bent down over here. "Are you okay? Did it puncture your--uh..." He seemed so disoriented he struggled to think. "Your, uh, skin? Are you bleeding, did it tear anything...?"

"Ow...I don't know," Peggy said, moving her hand slightly to peek at her wound. "I don't...think it's too bad."

"Here," I said, stepping forward. "Let me see--"

"No!" she cried, drawing back. I winced and withdrew my hand; Rodger moved closer, gently moving her hand. "Here, let _me_ see..."

Peggy moved her hand, and Rodger bent closely over her. I tried to see the wound, but Rodger was so close he blocked my vision, taking careful assessment of whatever damage was there.

"Hmm...it's not too bad," Rodger muttered. "But we'll need some sort of a bandage." He looked up at us. "Do any of you--oh, never mind, that'll do." _Riiiiip._

"Agh! Rodger!" I cried, jumping back and pulling up my trench coat, which was now frayed on the hem and several inches shorter than it had been mere seconds before.

"What?" Rodger asked distractedly; he had already turned back to Peggy and was using the cloth to wrap up her wound. Finally he moved aside, helping Peggy to her feet, a black band around her shoulder, clashing against the brightness of her hair and clothes. "Try to keep that covered," Rodger muttered, adjusting it gently.

"Thanks," she said wearily. Then she looked up at me and smiled. "And thanks to you, Dib. Sorry about your coat."

I scowled, taking it off and holding it out to assess the damage. "Hmm. Well, no big deal, I guess," I said, though I still felt a little bitter. Her comment made me feel a bit better, though. "Anyway, this won't be the first coat I've had to throw away, thanks to Zim." I began to put it back on, picking my backpack up from the floor. "Anyway, how are we going to--"

"_LOOK OUT!_" Jack suddenly screamed, pointing and eyes even madder than usual.

I spun around. The disabled bee had suddenly managed to dislodge itself from the floor, and it reared up in the air, holding out its thorax before it to use its sting like a weapon. It suddenly flew towards us, stabbing wildly. The others ducked--but it reached me in an instant, stabbing right through my damaged trench coat.

"_Agh!_"

In retrospect, yes, I probably should have let go of the coat, but at the time it just didn't occur to me; rather, the shock made me unconsciously tighten my hold. All I knew was that within seconds, I was flying up in the air, hands desperately gripping the cloth that was being dragged by a huge, mechanical alien bee.

"_Aaaggghhh!_"

The bee flew up into the air, apparently unaware that I was there. It climbed higher and higher. I heard the others shouting from the floor below--the robot bee, maybe hearing them or just feeling my weight, suddenly spun around to see me hanging by its sting, and suddenly began shaking me wildly, buzzing in irritation.

_"Agh!_" I tightened my grip on the coat, digging my fingers into the cloth with both hands. I suddenly realized that this room we were in was very, very tall--the bee kept rising, and the others were now very far below us. At this point, letting go was not an advisable option if I didn't want to risk breaking something.

"Dib!" I heard Peggy cry from far below. I screamed in response.

The bee flew around wildly, confused, trying to shake me off, but I tightened my grip, my brain scrambling wildly to figure out what to do. Suddenly I looked up and noticed something--an opening in one of the walls. A hallway which stopped inexplicably over a huge drop in the floor. I wondered about that a little--whether Zim had some kind of way to make that useful, like alien hovering machines or something, or maybe he was just a really bad architect, I didn't know--but that just might be a way off this crazy thing, and maybe even out of the base--

_"Bzzzz! Bzzz bzzzz bzzzzzzz!"_

The bee, getting increasingly frustrated, began to jerk back and forth; I gritted my teeth and tried to hang on, my fingers slipping from the smooth material of my cloak. Come on, come on...

The bee climbed a little higher...

Come on...

A little higher...a little higher...I was on level with the passage now, but the bee had to fly a little closer--

_"BZZZZ!"_

And then, in its mad and unlooking attempts to get rid of me, it crashed into the wall, right next to the tunnel.

I let out a cry and leaped, seconds before impact; my right hand closed around the ledge just as the bee hit the wall and exploded, my left still clutching my heavy backpack. I heard the others scream but ignored it; instead I scrambled up the ledge, then collapsed, panting.

"Dib! Dib! Are you okay?"

I sat up and looked down, over the edge at the others. They were far below. "I'm okay!" I called. "There's a passageway up here! I think it might lead up into Zim's main base!"

"Well, how do we get up there?!" Rodger called, sounding annoyed.

"Just a second!"

I sat down and opened my backpack, digging around inside; under all the mechanical equipment, at the very bottom I found my least advanced piece of technology--a rope. I threw one end down at the others; it was just long enough to reach them. "Here!" I called. "I'll hold onto this end! You guys climb up!"

"Oh," I heard Peggy say. "I was hoping we'd get to ride the bees too..."

Rodger, the lightest, came up first, followed by Peggy and then Jack. (Jack required all three of us to hold onto the rope, a fact made more annoying by the fact that he fell four times.) I wrapped up my rope and stowed it away, as Rodger and Peggy began to explore the tunnel.

"Dib, you were right!" Peggy called. "There's a way up--I think it leads into Zim's house! Come on!"

"Coming!" I quickly searched around for my trench coat--then remembered it had been attached to the bee when it had exploded. I grimaced, squirming unconsciously as I put my backpack on directly over my T-shirt, then followed Jack down the hallway.

At the end of the hall there was a set of metal steps attached to the wall, like a ladder; Rodger and Peggy were already halfway up. I followed them through a hole in the ceiling and found myself suddenly in Zim's living room.

"Here," Peggy said, reaching out to help me to my feet, then Jack as he came out behind me. We were climbing out of a simple, inexplicable hole in Zim's carpet. As soon as Jack was out, though, it suddenly closed up; the space was so perfectly camouflaged I would never have guessed that it was there.

"Huh. I'll have to remember that one," I muttered, raising an eyebrow. I looked up at the rest of the living room; it looked no different than it had before, with the exception of the empty pizza boxes, the melted cheeze all over the floor, and the robot, who was now lying lazily on the floor, sleeping, its metal stomach expanded with all the pizza it had eaten. How the metal could expand to accomodate food was beyond me. Or for that matter why the robot ate at all. Did it have to or just prefer it? What happened to the food anyway? Was it converted into energy like in an actual body, or disintegrated inside of it, or turned into waste to be emptied later, or what?

I pushed all of those questions out of my mind and turned to other ones. "The room looks normal," I mumbled. "I wonder if the security alert is still active, maybe it turns off after a certain amount of time, or when it senses us leaving the main labs..."

"Well, let's not take that risk!" Rodger said irritably. "Come on, let's get out of--"

"_Aaaggghhh!_"

Rodger froze. We all froze. We had all heard the same scream, recognized it instantly.

_Zim._

The front doorknob began to jangle. My eyes went wide. The others looked at me, just as shocked. I looked around wildly.

"The closet!"

I opened the closet door, and jumped in--the others followed. I slammed the door, closing us all in blackness, just as I heard the front door open. Zim entered the house, ranting wildly.

"--deactivated! Oh! Only the Dib-stink could have done this, I know it! GIR!"

"Wha?" I couldn't see, but I imagined the robot looking up from his sleep.

"What happened, GIR?! There I was up in the station, working on the problem with the robots, when suddenly I receive a call from the Base telling me that _someone has broken into our house!_"

"Oh...really?"

"Yes, really! Who was it, GIR? Was it the Dib? Huh? Huh?"

"Uh..." The robot sounded like it was thinking hard. I held up breath, praying silently for its usual stupidity. "I...don't remember..."

"_Ugh!_" Zim cried, even as I let out a sigh of relief. I heard him storm away, still ranting and raving about 'that big-headed monster-child.' A moment later I heard the toilet flush in the kitchen, and I knew he was going down to search down in the labs for whomever had intruded.

"Whoo...he's gone," I said, turning to the others, even as I couldn't see them in the darkness. I reached out blindly behind me, looking for the doorknob. "Okay...let's just hurry up and get out to here quick, and--agh! Hey, Rodger, let go of me!"

"Uh, I'm over here."

"Peggy?"

"No, that's not me."

"Uh...Jack?"

I heard a nervous screech that was not from the whoever's hand was gripping my shoulder.

I took a step back. "Uh...who..."

"Welcome home, son!" came a cheery, idiotic voice, right before I felt the mechanical hands grab me roughly and begin to squeeze.

* * *

Originally the whole break in thing was going to only be one chapter. Now it'll be three. Oy.

The next chapter will likely update soon and be very short, though. See you all then!


	13. CH 12: Hi Jacked

A shorter update today, to finish off the whole breaking-into-Zim's-house story arc. While continuing on another story arc in an interesting way. ;-) Hope you enjoy.

* * *

Chapter Twelve  
Hi-Jacked

_"Agh!"_

My hand slipped across the doorknob, opening the door, but just as I started to tumble out the hands grabbed me and lifted me into the air, squeezing tightly. The others all screamed and tried to run, only to have the other robot grab them, pulling them closer.

I had completely forgotten about Zim's "parents." The two robots were perhaps the worst out of all his creations; Zim's "skin condition" seemed perfectly plausible compared to anyone believing these two could possibly be human (though somehow, people always did). The father lifted me up, bringing me close to his face and frowning; the pipe that stuck out of its mouth drooped, his faux face falling into a look of confusion.

"My, now, young man! You're not my son! You're just _an intruder! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!_"

His happy-go-lucky voice instantly transformed; his head fell back, as did the face of his robotic wife, who was busy trying to keep Peggy, Rodger and Jack from leaving the closet. Their eyes glowing red, they both began to scream in their hollow robotic tones, and in response all the lights in the room began to flash red, a loud alarm sounding throughout the entire building.

"_INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!_"

"Whuz hap'nin'?!" Zim's more prominent robot assistant said, looking up again from his pizza-induced lethargy.

Zim's robot dad squeezed me tighter; I could barely breathe now. "Let me go!" I gasped, kicking futilely. "Help! Somebody!"

Rodger managed to break out of the robo-mom's grasp, grabbing Peggy by the hand to pull her along with him. Peggy leaped at the robo-dad and jumped onto its back; it suddenly broke out of its trance (though it eyes remained bright red spotlights) and whirled around, trying to dislodge her and sending me flying around madly. Suddenly it froze; its grip slackened, and I fell out onto the floor. It slumped down, as I saw Peggy pull a collection of wires from a panel out of its back. I stood up quickly, dusting off my shirt.

"Now, stop right there, you kids!" the robotic mom said, snatching at us, its voice an insane mixture of the loud robotic tone and its usual vapid cheerfulness. It grabbed at Jack, but Rodger jumped in and grabbed it by its arm, swinging it around and sending it crashing into the wall, where it slumped down. "Run!" he yelled, even as it began to climb back to its feet. Or wheels, whatever.

We rushed for the door. I turned the knob quickly--and realized that yes, in fact, it _was_ equipped with a lock after all.

"_Agh!_" I took a step back, hunched my shoulder and ran at the door. I bounced back, pain exploding down my arm, then rushed at it again. Rodger copied me, followed a moment later by Peggy using her uninjured shoulder.

_Crash! Crash! Crash!_

"What is going on here?! Who--_Agh! DIB-STINK!_"

I spun around--Zim was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking murderous. His spider legs were already extending themselves out of his PAK.

Rodger and Peggy screamed in unison. Rodger turned back to the door and gave one well-aimed kick to the doorknob; it suddenly broke off, along with a chunk of the door itself, and the two burst out of the house. I ran after them, ducking out just as Zim pounced at the doorway, one metal claw slashing the air so close to me that I think it may have torn the back of my shirt.

"_Noooo!_"

I ran after Rodger and Peggy onto the lawn, past the fence and around the neighboring building, finally stopping for a panting rest against the wall.

"That...was...stupid," Rodger gasped, shaking his head and clutching at his chest. "We could have been killed!"

"No...we couldn't have," I said, even as I struggled for air. "And we...found out...important information..."

"What information?!"

"Well, uh..." I struggled for a moment. "Well, okay, we didn't find out much. I guess. But, uh...well, it doesn't matter. We managed to break in and all three of us got out safe."

"Uh, guys?" Peggy asked, straightening up. "Weren't there..._four_ of us when we went in?"

Rodger and I both froze. My eyes traveled to him, over to Peggy, and over to the big blank space next to Peggy that was suddenly very conspicuously not occupied by a certain chubby, screeching child.

Just then I heard an insane scream echo from down the street.

"_Oh, you've got to be kidding me!_" I screamed, and without another word we all turned and ran right back to Zim's base.

Having broken Zim's front door, all we had to do was burst right back into the house to see the horrifying sight--Zim, standing triumphantly with his arms crossed, his little robot (somehow now deflated of its extra girth) standing beside him with a rubber piggy (I flinched; those things always freaked me out for some reason...) Jack was there, screeching and twitching and spazzing, being held a few feet off the floor by a giant mechanical arm that grew out of the ceiling. Jack's face was a mixture of horror and pain--he looked too scared to scream, or, given his blue complexion, perhaps not able to muster the air through the robotic claws' painful grip.

Zim spun around when we entered, his red eyes sparkling maliciously. "Ah, Dib! And Dib-friends," he added to Peggy and Rodger, waving offhandedly. "Now you--" He froze, eyebrow raised. "Hey, where's your stupid coat thingie?"

"It exploded along with one of your robotic bees," I said, glaring.

"What?! _NO!_My bees! My precious bees! Grrr!" He glared again. "Well. No matter. I see you have fallen for my ingenious trap to lure you here!"

"What ingenious trap?" a mechanical voice asked; evidently Zim's Computer was no longer napping. "All you did was tell me to catch the fat kid before he ran out the door--"

"And NOW!" Zim said, speaking over the Computer as if he had heard no objection, "You will tell me why you have broken into Zim's amazing base of amazingness, or else you're little friend here" he jabbed Jack in the stomach, causing him to let out an insane animal cry "will have...something...done! To him."

"Like what?" Rodger asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, uh..." Zim frowned, looking around for some idea.

"Oooh!" his robot assistant said, holding up his pig-holding hand and jumping up and down. "Let's feed 'im to a zeb'a!"

"YES!" Zim said, turning around to face me again. "Tell me why you broke in here, or I will feed your little friend here to a hideous, genetically-modified Earth-zebra! Thingy. Ha HA!"

"AGH! NOT THE ZEBRAS!" Jack choked, clutching his head, eyes wide with horror.

"Oh no!" Peggy gasped.

"No way, Zim!" I cried, taking a step forward and jabbing a finger at him. "Your zebra-feeding days are over!"

"Oh, yeah, Dib? And how do _you _intend to stop me? Huh? Huh?" he mocked, leaning forward and grinning his evil, lipless grin.

The others looked at me. My eyes darted around the room quickly, trying to think of some sort of a plan. Suddenly, without even thinking, I pointed and screamed, "Er--look! An attractive female Irken and her equally attractive female Irken computer!"

"What? Tak?" Zim said, spinning around.

"Tak's ship?" the Computer said, whirling its mechanical hand in a circle and loosening its grip just enough. I ran forward and grabbed Jack's hand, pulling with all my strength--he slipped out, and the two of us fell onto the floor. I let out a cry as his large girth hit me right on the chest, knocking the wind out of me.

Zim spun back, eyes wide. Before he could move, Peggy had rushed forward, grabbed Jack's hand and pulled him to his feet. "RUN!"

I climbed to my feet as we all turned and sprinted for the opened door.

"_What?! NO! Computer! Stop them!_"

The Computer's robotic arm shot forward, but Peggy pulled Jack out the door with her just before it could snatch him back up again. Rodger and I were already halfway across the lawn. The gnomes suddenly jerked to life, moving forward in awkward spurts--apparently not completely repaired yet. A pair of them moved onto the sidewalk to block our paths, but I merely pushed them aside--they fell to the ground, apparently not in good enough shape to do much in terms of a counterattack.

"_Nooooo!_" I heard Zim scream again as I ran past his little fence, but none of us stopped--we ran all the way back to the rendezvous point before finally collapsing against the tree, struggling for breath.

"Okay...that WAS stupid!" Rodger said, straightening up and glaring at me. "We all barely got out alive!"

"That thing coulda killed me!" Jack said, looking even twitchier than usual; he had certainly had a worse time in there than any of us, even before his capture, with his numerous burns and cuts all over his skin. "Killed me and sold my body to the--horrible zebras! _ZEBRAS!_" he screeched, eyes going wide with horror.

"Oh, thank goodness you're okay!" Peggy said, suddenly throwing her arms around Jack. "I was so worried Zim was going to do something horrible to you!"

And with that, she kissed him on the cheek.

"GAH!" Jack cried, jumping back, just as Peggy pulled away and turned, still seeming a bit scared and nervous but otherwise looking as if she had not just done anything of note. Rodger's eyes had gone wide and suddenly hard; in an instant his glare had left me to settle on Jack. I just stood there, shocked, eyes wide.

"Well, we better be going," Peggy said with a sigh, turning to her brother. "Come on, Rodger."

They turned and walked away. Jack, eyes still wide with horror--more at what had just happened than about Zim, I thought--let out a twitch of fright and then turned to waddle away as fast as his pudgy little legs could carry him.

I stood alone beside the tree for a moment, alone.

"Well," I muttered to myself, "I guess Peggy doesn't like me after all. She really is just overly friendly. Huh."

That was a relief. A part of me swelled happily, glad that my life wasn't going to be complicated any more by that creepy, overly-cheerful, blue-haired version of Keef in a skirt.

Yet for some reason, another part of me was strangely put-off about that...

* * *

I just want to say again that all apparent romance is just humor wearing a very clever disguise. Trust me, it's all leading somewhere funny, with hopefully a little character development along the way, of course. ;-)

Anyway. I will update fairly soon, I hope, but I need to work out what's going to happen in the next few chapters--a couple different storylines need to get going, though I already know what's happening in Chapter Thirteen. Partially because it's already happened before. (Hmm, I wonder if anyone'll get that hint.) Anyway, please review and see you soon.

...And you know, I didn't get much to a response to the other story ideas. But that may be good since I have new plot bunnies anyway...


	14. CH 13: Gretchen's Visitor

**WHOO!** Momentous events today, folks! This story has now passed **1,000 hits!** And today is the **six month anniversary** of when I started it! Hooray for me!

(...Although actually, I have no idea if six months and thirteen chapters is normal to get 1,000 hits. And if anything, this story should have been _done_ in six months. But, um...ignore those facts. Celebration, man. Yeah.)

And now, to celebrate, I have a special gift for all of my readers. First, there's this chapter--which I hustled to finish in time for this, by the way. And also, as a **bonus, **you get...this chapter! Narrated by somebody else. This comes in the form of a one-shot, "Wet Skoolbooks," which is basically this chapter from Gretchen's point of view. I had just put so much thought into what she would say and think in this chapter I felt I had to get that information out too. It also contains a _bit_ (tiny bit) of information that can give you a hint for what's coming up in this story, so, feel free to read that if you want to. I think it's a little better if you read that one before this, but it doesn't matter all that much.

Anyway. On to the story. And please leave reviews, of course, for both this and "Wet Skoolbooks." And thanks again to all my loyal readers for making this possible. :-)

* * *

Chapter Thirteen  
Gretchen's Visitor

I was still thinking about Peggy as I walked home.

"Come on, what's the problem?" I said, kicking a can forcefully so that it skipped down the street, landing beat up but ready for another blow. "What do I care if she gave Jack a kiss? I mean, she kissed me, she kissed Jack...apparently she just likes kissing people. And it's not like I like her...I mean...I don't think I do...do I?"

I paused, considering this, then shook my head forcefully. "No. No. She's...annoying and cheery and likes pink things and thinks unicorns count as paranormal science when they so, so do not. Though she is also kind of smart, actually...and nice...and pretty. Wait, is she pretty? I mean, she's not ugly..."

I grimaced. "Er! Stop it, Dib! You do not like Peggy! You and Peggy have a strictly professional, alien-fighting relationship." I paused. "Although," I grumbled, kicking the can again, "I don't know where else I'll ever find a nice, smart girl who has a crush on me..."

"Hey--Dib?"

"Agh!"

I jumped and spun around, already putting my hands up, unconsciously preparing to jump and attack Zim, before I blinked in the dark, narrowing my eyes. "Gretchen?"

She took a step forward into the light of a streetlamp, her braces glaring in the sudden brightness. She was carrying a collection of skoolbooks in her arms.

"Hey, Dib," she said, her nasally voice rising into a squeak. She blinked. "Hey, where's your trench coat?"

"Long story," I grumbled, crossing my arms, once again feeling woefully underdressed. I mean, my shirt had _short sleeves_ even. I might as well have been walking down the street in my underwear.

"Okay," she said simply, taking a few steps closer to me. She suddenly stumbled and nearly fell; I reached out quickly and grabbed her by the shoulders as her books tumbled out of her hands into a puddle on the sidewalk.

"Oh!"

I righted her quickly; she faltered a bit before managing to stand. I quickly bent down to pick up her books, frowning. "Er...these don't look too good," I warned.

"Oh...that's alright," she said, holding her arms out to take them.

I was about to hand them back, then stopped. "You know what? Why don't I just carry them for you. Your house is on my way home anyway."

"Oh!" she cried, her nasally voice rising to an unusually high pitch. She was turning a bit red--probably embarrassed, I thought, realizing how little little confidence I had in her book-carrying abilities. "Alright, then."

We started walking, side by side through the darkening night. Neither of us spoke for a few moments. Gretchen was looking carefully away. I wondered if maybe she didn't want me to be there, but had just felt rude declining my help. I had felt a bit weird myself offering it, but she was usually nicer to me than the other kids, and I felt like a little companionship at the moment. From someone who didn't drive me crazy in some way.

I cleared my throat awkwardly and decided to take a stab at conversation. "So, um...what's new?" _Since the last time you saw me, when I was covered in green goo,_ I thought suddenly with a tweak of embarrassment.

"Oh, nothing," she said, her voice quiet but squeaky. "I was just over at Keef's house...remember he's been out the last couple of days? I was going to deliver his homework."

"How is he?" I asked. Normally I wouldn't care very much--yeah, it's not a very nice thing to say, but really anything that kept him out of anybody's hair for a few days was pretty good in my book--but since he was a member of the SEJI, I was hoping he would be back on his feet soon. Even as annoying as he was, the more people I had on my side, the better.

"Actually, he wasn't there," Gretchen said, cocking her head to one side.

"Huh?"

"Yeah, nobody was. I knocked and nobody ever answered. Maybe they went out of town, or something...I don't know, it's kind of weird that he didn't mention it, though."

"Yeah, Keef's definitely not the kind of person to keep a secret," I said dryly. I shrugged. "Oh well. I was just kind of wondering because he's part of my paranormal investigators' club, and--"

I broke off in mid-sentence, wincing and cursing my stupidity. Agh! Why'd I always have to do that, say things like that without thinking? I froze, waiting for her reaction.

"Oh," she said simply. "Yeah, I think he had mentioned something about that..."

I chuckled nervously. "Uh, yeah. You probably think it's crazy though, right?" I had meant to sound light-hearted about it, pass off my embarrassment, but to my surprise it came out sounding very bitter.

"What? Oh, no! Well...I mean, it sounded pretty...interesting." She looked down at her feet. "Actually, I was...even thinking about coming to that meeting you had on Monday."

I blinked. "Really? Why didn't you?"

"Oh..." She shrugged, still looking down. "Just busy that day."

I wasn't sure what to say. I wondered vaguely if she was lying to make me feel better, and even considered asking her, but decided against it. I looked ahead, thinking. Gretchen was kind of nice to talk to--I rarely got to spend time with someone who didn't find me incredibly irritating, or vice versa.

"So, are you interested in the paranormal?"

"What? Oh, I don't know..."

"But you said you were interested in joining my club."

Gretchen gave a small, noncommittal sound. I frowned, looking away. "So, you think I'm crazy too? You don't believe that Zim's an alien, or any of that stuff?"

There was a long pause before she answered. "If I ever _did _meet an alien in my life," she said slowly, "it would be Zim."

I blinked, wondering how I was supposed to take that. It was oddly satisfying to at least find someone who didn't outright reject what I said. (I also wondered vaguely if I should mention that Gretchen had actually met _another_alien, Tak, but decided against it.)

A thought occurred to me. "Well, you know, maybe you could come for our next meeting," I suggested. "There's no rule saying you can't join a little late."

"Oh! Maybe," Gretchen said, sounding a bit hesitant. Again I wondered if she really wanted to at all or was just being nice. But then, maybe it didn't matter--"just being nice" was better than what most people gave me.

Gretchen cleared her throat, stopping suddenly. "Well, this is my house."

"What?" I looked up. "Oh. Okay. Here." I handed her back her wet books. "It was, uh, nice talking to you."

"You too," she said, looking away again.

She turned and walked into her house. I turned away and started walking back down the sidewalk towards home.

"Hmm. That _was_pretty nice," I mused to myself, looking back at Gretchen's house. "Nice to have a talk with somebody who doesn't think I'm crazy for a change. Or who's crazy themselves. Well, aside from Gaz. Nice to get a little break from all the insanity and just have a nice, normal conversation without any--"

_"Aaaaaggggghhhhh!"_

I slapped myself. _"Ugh._ How didn't I see that _coming?!_"

I spun around as Gretchen's door burst open, but just as she was leaping out of her house, a metal hand grabbed her.

Gretchen screamed again as the thing behind her squeezed out of her open front door, rising up to its full and considerable height. My mouth fell open. I recognized it instantly. The triangular body. The purple bubble in the middle of its chest. Its tentacled arms, its metal legs, its one long, oval eye--

The robot that had attacked me at skool!

"_Stop!_"

I ran forward without thinking, back down the sidewalk towards Gretchen's house, and the creature turned, its red eye growing wide as it saw me. It quickly spun around and threw Gretchen into its chest; she seemed to slide through the bubble effortlessly, and her screams were suddenly silenced, thought I could still see her moving and shrieking from inside her prison.

"Gretchen!"

The robot turned to face me again. I froze suddenly; I watched it, my heart pounding, and it stared back at me. My mind worked frantically, trying to formulate a plan of what to do.

And that's when I felt the shapes moving in from behind me.

I spun around. What I saw sucked the breath right out of my lungs.

Every door in the neighborhood had suddenly opened, and out of every house came a robot, identical to the one in front of me. They all had the same arms, the same eye, the same purple bubbles in their chests--and most of them, I saw with horror, had people trapped inside them just like Gretchen was, some struggling, some seeming calm, quiet, as if stolen in their sleep.

I was frozen to the spot. I couldn't move. Twelve robots were surrounding me now, forming a circle around me, with more on the periphery, crowding me in. What was I going to do?!

In that brief moment of confusion, the bot with Gretchen trapped inside of it attacked.

A hole opened above its bubble--a small, dark hole like some bizarre mouth, and from it shot a slimy purple ball that expanded in midair to form a net. I let out a cry and threw up my arm, just as it splattered onto me, pinning me to the ground with surprising strength. I tore at it, but I couldn't get it off--it was covered in purple slime, it stuck to my hands and clothes, I was just tangling myself up in it--

_"Capturebot Units 114-135 receiving orders to retreat."_

The words came out of each robot, spoken in perfect unison in a flat, emotionless tone. It made me suddenly think of what Zim's Computer would sound like without the sarcasm.

Instantly all the robots dropped down. Their bodies began to fold up as they converted into the rocket forms.

"Hey! Stop!"

I could still see the bubble that had trapped Gretchen; she pounded her fist against it, still screaming, but she seemed to be weakening...was there enough air in there?

Suddenly Gretchen's robot shot up into the air, shimmered and vanishing. Each of the robots all around me blasted off too, and soon the air was filled with shimmering spots and the sounds of engines that seemed to have no source--

"_Agh!_"

I finally managed to squeeze myself out of the net, at least halfway, so that I could move, dragging it behind me as it continued to stick to my hair, skin and clothes. But it was too late--the last robo-rocket was taking off, blasting into the sky with two little kids screaming inside its pod. It shimmered and vanished after the others.

I stared after it, mouth open, frozen on the spot. Slowly I looked around, at all the houses around me--every door open where the robots had emerged, every house silent and empty. The street was completely deserted. Nobody else had noticed anything. Nobody was _there_ to notice anything.

"Oh man," I whispered. "This is _not_ good."

* * *

Chapter title was hard to come up with...it came down to this or "The Bots Are Back," which I decided against because it gave too much away. Just so you know.

So, yeah. For the people who read it, this is basically a rewrite of the original Chapter 8, but with Gretchen (who was in the new Chapter 8) added into it. So, now we're back on track with the robot storyline. Cool. Now to get started on the missing scientists subplot...


	15. CH 14: The Other O'Sullivans

This chapter manages to be (fairly) short but still get a lot done. Hope you guys enjoy!

And as always, please leave reviews. I mean, I always get one from Invaderzimfannumber1, Obeythedib and Chaos of the Asylum--which I really appreciate, you guys (er, girls)!--but I know other people are reading too. The little Reader Trafficky thing tells me so. Now leave reviews! I review your stuff, you know. _Vive la Review Revolution!_

* * *

Chapter Fourteen  
The Other O'Sullivans

"And then they were gone, Gaz! Gone! Everybody, Gretchen, her family, her whole neighborhood— "

"What do you mean, 'gone,' Dib?"

"I mean _gone!_ The robots took them all! I went into every house there, every house on her street and— "

"You broke into people's houses?"

"What? No! Well…technically, I guess— but all the front doors were open, so I don't even think that counts! The point is, every house was empty, Gaz! The robots took everybody, everybody on that street!"

Gaz was sitting on the couch; she continued to stare at her Game Slave, never glancing up at me, but I could tell I had her listening. Reading Gaz's expressions was always a complex, subtle procedure, but after ten years of knowing he I had begun to recognize the telltale signs— the careful way she kept her eyes down, the slowness of her fingers on the buttons, and, of course, the fact that she was responding to me at all with something other than a threat.

"Who is this Gretchen, anyway?" Gaz asked, tapping a few buttons in a perfunctory sort of way.

"She's that girl in my class— uh, purple braids, nice but with really bad teeth?"

"That Peggy girl's chief competition?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind," Gaz said, rolling her eyes. "But why would Zim want to capture her? I mean, there's nothing particularly special about her, right?"

"But that's the thing, Gaz— the robots took _everybody!_ Not just in that neighborhood, either— on the way back here, I noticed, nobody had their lights on, there were no cars, all the houses were completely silent! It was only when I got back to our street that I started hearing people again— I think Zim's sending those robots to capture— everybody!"

I glanced up nervously, eyes darting to the window, half-expecting to see one of their lumbering forms outside on the lawn as I spoke; I jumped at a sudden movement before realizing it was only a tree. I turned back; Gaz's eyes, which had been on me for that one brief second, were instantly back on her game.

"Everybody? Like, the whole city?" she asked. She sounded skeptical. "That seems a bit ambitious, even for Zim--"

"Have there been a lot of people missing from your class lately?" I asked, talking over her.

She didn't answer for a moment, but her fingers froze on the game. "A few," she admitted.

"My class too! The last few days--Keef was gone on Tuesday, so were a bunch of other kids, and today they were all gone and a few more. I was thinking about it on the way home--Gretchen even said she went by Keef's house and it looked like his whole family was gone--and remember, this was the _same_robot Zim sent to the skool, and the ones I heard him and his Computer talking about when the SEJI and I were in his base!"

I paced the living room furiously, glancing back out the window every few seconds. Gaz went back to playing her game, but after a few seconds finally said, "Well, I guess it sounds like something for you and your weirdo club to investigate, then?" I heard the draining sound of her losing a life, and she grimaced and turned off her game. "I'm going to bed," she grumbled, jumping up and walking up the stairs without another word.

I checked my watch. It was already almost 10:30. I hadn't realized it was so late, though when I considered that it had only been a few hours ago that I had left the house to meet up with Peggy, Rodger and Jack it seemed amazing that it was still the same week.

I went upstairs to my room, but I didn't sleep; I spent most of the night on my computer, furiously typing out twenty or so different plans, each more impossible than the last, my eyes shooting to my window every few seconds to await the attacking robots.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP--_

_POUND POUND POUND POUND!_

"Dib! Get up! It's almost time for skool!"

"Agh!"

I sat up suddenly, letting out a small cry and rubbing my face, my hand feeling the impression of dozens of computer keys. I blinked--I had apparently fallen asleep at my computer sometime around five. My alarm clock was beeping beside my bed.

"Ah, crud," I grumbled. I got up and quickly dressed, tugging on a new trench coat with relief, and then scrambled downstairs, where Gaz was sitting on the couch, flipping through the TV channels with a bowl of cereal in her lap.

"Ugh, they've started showing your stupid show in the morning now," she grumbled, stopping momentarily and motioning to the TV with her remote hand.

"Huh?" I glanced up.

_"So could these sightings of giant alien moon-slugs possibly be true? We at _Mysterious Mysteries_ have received conclusive photos..."_

"Oh, yeah, they just replay the episode from the previous night...ooh, that's a new one," I said, standing on my toes to watch over the couch. Those tracks in the lunar dust sure did look real...I shook my head. "Wait--no, turn it to the news. I want to see if there are any reports about the giant robot attacks."

"Same junk as this," she grumbled, but she switched the channel just as the morning news was coming on.

"_Hello. This is Ted Johnson filling in for morning anchorman Brett Beauson, who is not in today."_

"_NO! _The robots got morning anchorman Brett Beauson!"

"_Shhh! _Quiet!" Gaz snapped, pointing to the screen with the remote again.

"_--reports of large numbers of people mysteriously missing from the city, disappearing without a trace. Police have come to blame these mysterious disappearances on--_"

I drew in a breath, holding it expectantly.

"_--the 15th Annual County Chili Festival taking place in Citytown this weekend!"_

"_WHAT?!_"

"_Each year hundreds of people from our fair city flock to Citytown for the annual festival, and this year's turnout is expected to be better than ever before! So, ask your boss for time off and go to experience two days of rides, entertainment and lots and lots of dee-lishous chili! On the sports front--_"

"Agh!" I slammed my head against the couch, closing my eyes tightly to keep the dangerous stupidity levels out of my brain. Even Gaz seemed a bit taken aback. "Wow...that's a stupid explanation," she said simply, spooning another mouthful of Count Cocofang's into her mouth.

"The sad thing is," I said, my voice muffled by the cushions, "is that I don't know if this is because Zim was somehow behind that report as part of his evil master plan, or if the news channel is just being sponsored by a chili company."

"_And in other news, a missing person's report has been filed for Drs. Patrick and Debra O'Sullivan, famed scientists working at the University of--"_

"Hey, it's those people Dad was talking about," I said, glancing up from my pillowy shame.

"_Shhh!_"

"_--Smartypants Award. Police say have no leads as to their whereabouts._"

The screen cut suddenly to my dad, a bunch of microphones held up to him from different angles with reporters shouting questions. He waved his gloved hands in an attempt for silence.

"_No, no, I do not have any information about where my prestigious colleagues--though less prestigious than me, of course--have gone to, but fortunately, I have managed to take up their newest research into hyperadvanced spaceship engineering, which is likely to aid Nasaplace in developing new and exciting possibilities in space exploration. Good for me! As for Patrick and Debra, they're probably just on vacation or something. That Patrick always was a bit too laid back if you ask me."_

The scene cut back to the anchor. "_Police are now investigating. If they are on vacation as Professor Membrane believes, they're likely to be found at the Citytown 15th Annual County Chili Festival, which--_"

"Turn it off," I said in disgust, as Gaz flipped to one of her nature documentaries about venomous mongooses.

"Well, that was a waste of time," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Although..."

"What?"

"Nothing," I said. I was just thinking about what Dad had said about those two missing scientists--they were working with spaceship engineering, apparently. That was pretty interesting--I made a mental note to ask Dad more about what they had been working on whenever he got home.

I had time to shovel down a quick bowl of Cocofang's before Gaz and I headed off for skool. My plan was to rush to find Jack, Peggy or Rodger as soon as I could--assuming, I thought with a gulp, they were still there at all...

I stumbled a bit as I walked down the hallways, blinking and rubbing my eyes--I was feeling exhausted after all the events of the previous night. I decided the best way to find the other SEJI members would be to go straight to their classes and wait for them to arrive. Remembering vaguely that Peggy had said she was in Mr. Gershwin's room, I headed there and waited outside the door, silently praying that she would turn up.

Fortunately, it was only a few moments before I saw her distinctive blue-and-purple hair bobbing down the hallway. Though she didn't have the baggy eyes that I had seen on myself in the mirror that morning, she looked about as tired; she yawned softly behind her hand as I approached, then looked up and blinked when she saw me.

"Oh...hey Dib. What's--"

"Giant robots!"

"Pardon?"

"Giant robots! Like the one that attacked me on Monday! I saw more of them! They attacked a girl from my class and kidnapped her and her entire neighborhood, right in front of my eyes!"

Peggy blinked, eyes going wide. "Whoa...really?" She began to play absentmindedly with her shoulder, which, I noted, had a bandage on over her injury from the night before.

"Yeah! Remember, Zim mentioned something about this, and his Computer too--I thought they were just talking about the robot they sent to me at the skool, but there are more of them, a ton more, and I think they're kidnapping everyone in town! We need to--"

"Excuse me."

We looked up. Mr. Gershwin had just come out of the classroom, looking annoyed.

"Class is about to start, you two," he said sternly. "We wouldn't want to be late again, would we, Miss O'Sullivan?"

"Oh. No, sorry, sir," Peggy said, smiling. She turned to me. "PITS meeting later, okay?"

"Uh, yeah, okay, sure," I said, my mind still racing. "Try to find Jack, if you can..."

Peggy nodded and turned to walk into the classroom. I turned and began to walk down the hall towards Ms. Bitters' room. I was several steps away before something clicked in my brain.

"Wait--O'Sullivan?"

I spun around, just as Mr. Gershwin shut the classroom door.

* * *

I'm curious--did anybody note that connection? Other than the people who read it in the original Chapter Eight? And I've also left a clue or two here about what's eventually going to happen, but I think it's written in a way that no one will be able to get it until later.

Will try to update soon, and be on the lookout, since I think I may be posting another multi-chapter story soon...probably this Saturday if I decide to. And then I have to update "Endorsements of the Doomed"...and my parody story in the Eragon section...and I have school (I keep wanting to type "skool!") starting again soon. Oy.


	16. CH 15: Too Many Mysteries

Whenever I think "this chapter is going to be one of my shortest," it always winds up the longest--over 3,000 words this time. Go figure. Anyway, the plot's getting thicker than molasses in an igloo, and we have some third-person dialogue near the end, so I hope you all enjoy (and review)!

* * *

Chapter Fifteen  
Too Many Mysteries

Four or five kids had been absent on Tuesday. Seven or eight Wednesday. Now, on Thursday, more than half the class was missing, including all the kids who had been gone the day before, Gretchen and two or three other students.

"Hmm. Apparently there's a bug going around," Ms. Bitters grumbled, her eyes sweeping up and down the roll sheet on her desk.

"Bug?" Zim looked up, alarmed. "What is this about a bug? Of what bug do you speak? Tell me, Bitters-monster!"

I snorted. Loudly. Zim's eyes shot around, glaring. I glared right back.

"Yeah, right, Zim, as if you didn't know why half the class is really absent," I grumbled. Though in fairness Zim probably didn't know what Ms. Bitters meant when she said "bug." Hmm, was Zim afraid of bugs? Note to self, go to pet store and buy a thing of cockroaches...though be careful to avoid a replay of the cricket incident...

Ms. Bitters began her lecture on the economic crises of the twenty-first century, and by the end of the lesson my desultorily-written notes were pretty much a list of dates with the words "doom" written next to them. I watched Zim out of the corner of my eye throughout the lecture. While he obviously wasn't paying attention to what Ms. Bitters was saying, his face was sharp, focused, thinking. He shot me a glare every few moments, aided by the fact that most of the seats between us were empty now. I wondered if it was only because of the break-in of his base, or if he also knew from his robots that I was onto his plans.

I bent down over my desk, putting my skoolbook up to block Ms. Bitters' view of what I was really doing. A map was spread out over my desk, with a notebook on top of it. Eyes narrowed, tongue between my teeth and with the occasional glare shot towards Zim, I began to plan my next move.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"We're going to do what?!"

"Stake out the robots and find out what they're up to," I repeated, motioning with my pointer to the chalkboard of Room 106. I had taped up my map of the city, which was covered with little dot-stickers of different colors.

Rodger gaped at me. Jack looked fearful. Peggy was listening while absentmindedly playing with a collection of glittery streamers attached to the end of her pen.

"Look," I said, pointing to the map again, "I stayed up all last night researching what's been happening." A long, loud yawn escaped my mouth to illustrate the point. "Around 2 AM, I got out the phone book and started making random calls to different parts of the city, to see where I got people to pick up and where nobody seemed to be home. Each of these green dots" (I motioned with my pointer) "represent a home or business I called where the people answered the phone, while each of these red dots (I pointed) represent a place I called where nobody picked up. Now, we can see that the dots are more-or-less concentrated in different parts of the city, with a few red dots in green areas from where people just slept through my calls--"

"Question." Peggy raised her hand. "What about those purple dots?"

"What? Uh..." I cleared my throat and said very quickly under my breath, "Those represent death threats I got for waking people up at 2 AM. But anyway, the point is, when I plotted the addresses along with whether or not anybody was home, I got that large sections of the city seem to already be empty, while others are still populated. It looks like Zim's robots are starting in the center of town and moving outwards." I indicated a few spots on the map to illustrate the point. "_This"_ I pointed to a blue dot onto which I had drawn a little house "is my house. It seems to be right on the border of the red and green dots, which means there's a very strong chance the robots are going to attack there tonight. Where do you guys live?"

"Huh?" Peggy asked, jerking up suddenly from her position half-slouched over the table.

"You guys's houses. Where are they?"

"Eh. Jack don't tell nobody where he lives," Jack said, eyes going wild and wide. "CIA finds out--get meh toenails for sure--precious, precious toenails!"

"Look, Jack, I promise nobody's going to steal your toenails, I just need to know--"

"TOENAILS!" His foot shot up and he grabbed it greedily, causing him to wobble and fall out of his chair onto the floor.

I sighed, then turned to Peggy and Rodger. "What about you guys? Where do you live?"

Peggy opened her mouth to speak, but Rodger beat her to it, arms crossed over his chest. "Downtown."

I blinked. "_Down_town?"

"Yeah. I guess your robots missed us," he said scathingly.

I looked from him, to an apologetic-looking Peggy, to my map, frowning. "That...doesn't really make sense. Have you--I don't know, noticed anything strange lately? Does it seem like your neighbors are missing, or something?"

"I haven't really noticed either way," Peggy said. Her voice sounded a bit quiet, less cheery than usual.

I looked at the map again, frowning. The whole downtown area was covered in red dots, "But that doesn't make sense. I called all over that part of the city, and nobody ever picked up--"

"Well," Rodger said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "you _did_ call at 2 AM. In case you didn't realize, a lot of people tend to _sleep_ around that time--"

"But people picked up in other places! Mostly. I mean, like I said, there are some red dots mixed in with the green ones, but it wouldn't make sense for absolutely every person downtown to not pick up, statistically--"

"For that matter, maybe your whole theory is wrong," Peggy said. "Maybe Zim's not after _every_body in town at all."

My jaw dropped. Peggy's tone was far kinder than Rodger's, but somehow her disbelief stung me more. "But the news reports! All the people missing!"

"Well, maybe they're at that chili festival, I heard some people talking--"

"_Ten thousand people do not leave the city en masse to go to a chili festival!_ Especially not days in advance when it's a forty-five minute drive away!"

"Well, maybe they left early to save money on gas."

"...That doesn't make any sense!"

"Yeah, but still."

"What?! Look, I'm telling you guys, I'm right about this. Zim is sending these robots and he's rounding up everybody in town. I don't know why he skipped you guys' house--maybe the robots just overlooked it, or--maybe he skipped them so that we wouldn't find out, he realized if he captured you guys then the rest of us--"

"But doesn't that kind of invalidate your theory that that's what that annoying kid has been missing since Monday?" Rodger asked, eyebrow raised.

"I--don't know, okay?! Just go with me on this! I know Zim, I've been fighting him for almost a year, I've stopped him dozens of times before. I'm the professional here."

Rodger scoffed. "Well. Somebody has a big head," he grumbled.

_"MY HEAD'S NOT BIG!"_ I screamed, feeling my frustration explode like a bomb in my chest and out of my mouth.

Rodger drew back, startled. Peggy leaned forward and muttered behind her hand, "I think you struck a nerve, there."

I took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. "Now, look. My plan is, we go out tonight and stake out the town, in the places where, if I'm right, Zim's robots will attack next. Now, I don't--"

"Another little field trip?!" Rodger demanded, looking shocked. "Um, sorry, _President _Dib, but we're still kind of recovering from last night's suicide mission, thanks." He pointed at Peggy's shoulder, and the bandage still showing beneath her blouse.

"We won't be in any danger! You're right, I don't think we can really fight these robots--I've done it twice and it came out badly both times. But if we find one, we can at least try to find out what they're doing--maybe plant a tracking device, or a monitor, or something. Get an idea of what Zim's plan is, and then--"

"Call the police?" Peggy suggested.

Both Jack and I looked shocked.

"Not the poh-leese! They're in league with the CIA! They'll capture ya themselves and tear your nails right out!"

"Jack is right," I said. "Well--wait, no, not really. But he is right about the police, they'd never believe us. Trust me, I know," I muttered. The incident with Zim's demon fire hydrants still stung my pride. And my lower back whenever I sat down wrong, I really needed to see a chiropractor about that particular injury. "Involving the police just always leads to _me_ getting arrested, and that's already happened once this week, and I'm sick of having to subtract bail money out of my allowance. We need to figure this out for ourselves."

"Well, if we can present them with truth--"

"Rodger, they'll never believe us, no matter how much evidence you give. Otherwise, everyone in the skool would already know that Zim was an alien! If we want to stop Zim, we have to do it ourselves!"

"But that's insane."

"No I'm not!"

"No, I said _that's_ insane. You are insane too, though, now that I think about it."

I opened my mouth to retort, but Peggy suddenly jumped in. "Rodger, I think we should help him."

"What?!"

"Well, look at it this way." She sounded tentative, like she was only reluctant to be making this argument. She turned to me. "Dib, you're going to go and do this with or without our help, right?"

"Of course. I'm not letting Zim do who-knows-what to the entire city, no matter what the risk!"

"Well, then," she said, turning back to Rodger, "it makes sense for us to at least help him, doesn't it? That way, at least there's a better chance at success."

Rodger opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but Peggy gave him a severe, older-sisterly look. Rodger's mouth opened and closed a few times like he was chewing on the words he was desperate to say, then he slouched in his chair with his arms crossed, looking surly. _Hmm. If only I had that kind of control over Gaz,_ I thought.

I sighed. "Okay. Now, I think we should split up--"

"Split up?!" Jack cried.

"--Yes, Jack, but don't worry, not individually, that'd be too risky. It'd be better if made went in two teams. I don't really know what the best way is to divide--"

"I'm going with Peggy," Rodger said at once.

Peggy cleared her throat. "Actually, I think it would be better if I went with Dib, and you went with Jack."

"Huh?" Rodger looked outraged. "Why--"

"Just...trust me," Peggy muttered, giving him another look. Then she looked up at me and gave a weak smile. "So, that okay? Me and you, Dib, and Rodger goes with Jack?"

"Uh...I guess so," I said, feeling my stomach clench.

"Okay."

We finished making the plans. We picked two spots where, if I was right, the robots would probably go that night--my own street, where I would meet Peggy, and another neighborhood nearby where Jack and Rodger would stake themselves out. After finishing with our plans, we all rose to leave.

Jack wobbled out the door immediately, looking as fearful as ever, while Rodger hung in the doorway, waiting for Peggy as she gathered her things. "Well, I'll see you in a few hours, I guess," she said, as I removed the map from the blackboard.

"Uh, yeah." I felt my stomach do a flip-flop; the thought gave me a sudden feeling of dread. Dread for what I didn't know; though going with Rodger or Jack would be just as annoying in different ways, I suddenly felt my palms get sweaty and my heart thump when I thought about being alone with Peggy.

_You do not have a crush on Peggy. This is the anxiousness of not-having-a-crush-on-Peggy...ness. It is the anxiousness of the fact that you don't know if she has a crush on you, and that she's strange and annoying, so it's awkward no matter what despite the fact you have no crush on her whatsoever. Yeah. That's it. _

I had a sudden feeling that somewhere, Gaz was rolling her eyes.

"So, I'll come over to your house around 7?"

"Okay," I said nervously.

"Come on," Rodger said, tapping his foot impatiently against the floor.

"Okay, Rodg. Bye Dib!" She waved, turned and ran out the door, Rodger following closely behind her.

I finished packing up my things and headed for the door too. I was halfway down the hall when I felt him suddenly appear behind me, his footsteps clicking on the tiled floor.

I didn't bother to look, but my eyes narrowed anyway. "What do you want, Zim?" I sneered.

"I _want _to know what you and your little club are planning, Dib-stink," he hissed, sounding about as dark and sinister as I had ever heard him before.

I stopped walking and turned, glaring. Zim was glaring back at me through his fake human eyes. He was the perfect visage of silently controlled evil fury. Except for the green dog that was hugging his right leg tightly while being dragged across the floor behind him.

I raised an eyebrow. "What--"

"Super glue accident," Zim said tersely, waving the subject angrily away.

"The glue wanted to play wit' me!" the dog/robot said, flashing a huge smile. Zim growled. I almost felt sorry for him; the one time he manages to actually be dramatic and it was ruined by his stupid servant.

"Anyway, Dib-pig, I have come to find out what you and your little friends are planning in your next pitiful attempt to bring me down. _TELL ME NOW!_" he screamed, dropping any pretext about being cool and collected.

I smirked. "You would like that, wouldn't you, Zim?"

"Well, duh. That's why I'm asking."

"Er...right. But that's not the point! The point is that I'm not telling you what we're planning. And we're planning big things, alright! Big...BIG things!"

Okay, so I wasn't the most dramatic and cool guy either. But you know, he had time to plan his speech beforehand, while I had to play this conversation by ear. So, you know...yeah.

Zim growled and rose on his PAK legs, standing over me like a giant spider, his back almost to the ceiling; the dog/robot let out a cry as it was lifted off the ground, its extra weight causing Zim's metal legs to wobble. I drew back slightly but forced myself not to cower at Zim's sudden increase in height.

"Do not think that I don't know what's going on here, _Dib._ You think I don't? Well, you can tell your little _girlfriend_ that I know all about her secret. I know why you two have teamed up, and I won't stand for it!"

"Huh? You mean Peggy?" I raised an eyebrow. "I honestly don't know what--"

"Do not play dumb with me, you big--dumb--dummy! You do not want to mess with me, Dib! I am the greatest of all Irken Invaders. Do you know what amazing honor the Almighty Tallest give to Zim? They would bring the entire Armada across the galaxy if I requested it, so don't you two dare try to get in my way or I swear there will be _trouble!"_

With that his PAK legs vanished; he fell smoothly to the floor, though his dog banged metallically against the floor and let out a cry of pain, followed by a giggle. Then Zim turned and swept away, dragging the green creature behind him.

I stood there, gaping.

_You can tell your little girlfriend that I know all about her secret. I know why you two have teamed up, and I won't stand for it!_

Again Peggy's last name drifted into my head. O'Sullivan. Just like the missing scientists.

It was a common last name. A coincidence? But what else could Zim be talking about?

Whatever it was, I was going to ask Peggy as soon as I saw her that night.

* * *

"Calm--RODGER! Calm down!"

"I am sick of this! I am sick of this skool, I am sick of that Dib, I am sick of his stupid little club and everything about it! It was a mistake to try to get them involved, it was a mistake, it's distracting us from our entire--"

"It was not a mistake! It's thanks to Dib and his club that we know anything about Zim. If we want to succeed--"

"And then you tell Dib to split us up! What was the point in that?!"

"So that we would be on both teams! So that if either group finds one, one of us will be there! There's no real point if we were going together, is there?"

"...I don't like this."

"You don't like anything."

"You're just getting too deeply involved with these people! With all your talk about how little time we have to do this, you keep insisting we waste our time at skool and at that club rather than doing what we should be doing! We shouldn't be out doing _this_, we should be trying to fi--"

"Look, Dib and Jack are involved, Dib tangled with the bots on his own and there's no way to keep him away from them, especially because of his vendetta against this--this _Zim_. But now that they are involved, the best thing we can do is deal with it. We just have to be careful."

"We _should _just--"

"We've been over this. We're not doing that. Not to Dib and not to Jack."

"Why not?!"

"Because I like them too much, alright?! It's better this way."

A pause, then a sigh. "I hope you know what you're doing."

Another sigh. "So do I."

* * *

Writing realistic dialogue that hints without giving things away is hard.

Anyway, please leave a nice happy review now, and be on the lookout, since I think I'll be posting a new story tomorrow. Sorry to Obeythedib, but the plot bunny demanded.


	17. CH 16: Waiting, Questions, Doom and Stuf

Sorry to all my readers that it's taken so long to update; going back to school and everything has cut into my time, and "Death of the Dib" got some attention at the expense of this story. I also wrote a one-shot ("Lazy Boring Labor Day," starring the Membrane family) if you're interested in looking that up. But here's the new chapter, and I hope you all enjoy it!

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Chapter Sixteen  
Waiting, Questions, Doom and Stuff

"So, what could it be, Gaz?! What could Zim have meant? Is it just a coincidence that those scientist friends of Dad's have the same last name as them, or could Zim somehow be involved in that? Is he just lying? But why would he? He's never just made something up like that, not unless he had some kind of other evil plan. _What does this all mean?!_" I cried, grabbing my head in frustration.

"Dib? You know how whenever something happens to you, you come home and tell me all about it? That's really, _really _getting old." Unlike the night before, Gaz did not seem all that interested in listening; her fingers were flying over the game controls with lightning speed, the game beeping wildly. "You need some friends."

"Hey! I have friends."

"Like who?"

"...Well, there's...the people I'm ranting to you about. And you." I looked away, feeling my face turn red.

After a moment Gaz sighed, then said, "If you want to know so badly, just ask her what he meant."

"What if she lies?"

She smirked. "What? You and your girlfriend having trust issues already?"

"_She's not my girlfriend, _Gaz. Shut up about that!"

"Whatever." Another pause and a few more beeps and explosions emanating from her game. "I bet she's an alien."

"_What?_ Why would you guess that?"

"Experience. Zim--alien. Tak--alien. That new kid in my class--alien."

"There's a new kid in your class who's Irken?!"

"No. Canadian. But still."

"Ugh." I grimaced and rolled my eyes. "Peggy can't be an alien. We saw her in the cafeteria, remember? She was eating Earth food and drinking water and everything. Not even Tak ever managed to pull that off. No," I put my hand to my chin, "but I think there _is_something about her that she's not telling me. I can't think of any other reason that Zim would say that...it could just be something stupid, knowing Zim, but it could be important. And I'm gonna find out what!"

I punched my fist into my palm dramatically. Then jumped when the doorbell rang.

"AGH! She's here!"

I jumped back, staring at the door in horror. Gaz looked up from her game long enough to give me a withering look. "Want me to get it? Should I tell her you need more time to put on your make-up or something?"

I scowled, glared, marched purposefully to the door, reached out to open it, hesitated half a second, then threw it open.

Peggy smiled up at me. Having been warned at the meeting that her tie-dye clothes did not match with the mission at hand, she had thrown a dark blue jacket over her usual bright outfit, but that was completely ruined by her hat. I had suggested that everyone should bring a flashlight with them; Peggy had instead opted for what looked like a miner's helmet with built-in light, except that she had painted it pink with butterflies and hearts. My stomach turned over in what I knew, this time for sure, was definitely _not_ infatuation.

"Hey, Dib!" she said, smiling broadly. She peeked her head in, eyes going wide. "Wooow...is this your house? It looks really nice. Mind if I come in, look around, maybe peek in your medicine cabinets, things like that?"

"Er--actually, I think we better just get going. Don't want to be late...for, you know...the robot-spying-on."

"Oh." Her face fell for a fraction of a moment, then perked up again. "Well, okay. Oh, hey, Gaz!"

She grinned and waved over my shoulder. Gaz looked up for a moment, her face blank, then turned back to her game without returning the gesture. Peggy did not stop, however.

I coughed awkwardly. "Um, anyway, we should get going," I said.

Apparently realizing Gaz wasn't going to be waving back anytime soon, Peggy dropped her hand. "Okay." She looked me up and down. "Uh, where's your supplies?"

"My huh?"

"Your supplies? You said we'd need a flashlight, and that you'd grab some of your technical equipment to bring along--"

"Oh!" I turned red again; I had completely forgotten about any of that stuff. "I'll, uh--heh-heh, be right back--"

I turned and ran up the stairs. Gaz smirked as I zipped past. I considered trying for some kind of clever retort, but thought better of it; I had enough pains in my life as it was...

"Okay, ready," I said a few minutes later, when I had returned with my coat bulging with different devices, and a pair of night-vision goggles on my face in place of a more conspicuous flashlight.

"Try not to be out too late, you too," Gaz called sarcastically as we walked out the door. I sent her one final silent glare before slamming the door behind me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_Tssssst..._

"Hello? Are you guys there?"

"Roger that...er, Rodger. Hee-hee." Peggy giggled. "Dib and I are hiding behind one of his neighbor's houses. Oh, by the way, while I'm thinking about it, did you remember to set the TV to record _The Scary Monkey Show_ tonight, I don't want to miss the season finale--"

"Ugh! Give me that!" I snatched the walkie-talkie away, giving her a look.

"What?" she said, sounding indignant.

"This is serious business here! The walkie-talkies aren't for talking about some stupid TV show!" Really, I thought, if she wanted to watch her show so badly, she should have made sure to set it herself...I certainly hadn't trusted Gaz to make sure I didn't miss tonight's _Mysterious Mysteries._

...Wait, I had remembered to set that up, hadn't I? I hoped so, I didn't want to miss the follow-up report about those moon slugs.

I turned back to the walkie-talkie. "Agent Rodger, Agent Freakout, are you two in position? Over."

"...Do we really have to use these stupid names?"

"Yes. Over."

Sigh. "Agent Rodger and Agent Freakout in position." I heard Jack let out a spazzing cry behind him. I think I could actually somehow hear Rodger rolling his eyes over the transmission. "What about you guys?"

"You're supposed to say over."

"...You really annoy me, you know that, Dib? Now are you two ready for this stupid waste of time or not? Over."

I glared at the walkie-talkie, then, as evenly as I could, "Agent Mothman and Agent..." I hesitated, then sighed. "Agent Pretty-Pony in position. Over."

"Good. Then let's get this idiocy _over_ with. Over and out."

I sighed again as he hung up, then stowed the walkie-talkie away in a pocket of my coat. I turned back to Peggy, who still looked a bit sulky about me snatching it from her. But finally she sighed and asked, "So, how long you think this'll be?"

"I don't know. Hopefully it'll turn up soon."

"...You're hoping it comes and kidnaps all of your neighbors for part of some hideous alien experiment?"

"What? No! I'm just...trying to stop it, and...er...you know what I mean."

I peeked out from behind the fence, scanned the empty street from one side to another. It was empty, and the houses were all lit, with people moving about inside them. This house was the only empty one; my neighbors who lived here were out on vacation.

I was tense, waiting for the robot's appearance. I checked and rechecked everything in my head, every potential problem or pitfall. We couldn't try to stop the robots, not if we wanted to follow them without being noticed or captured ourselves--hopefully whatever they were doing, no one they abducted would be in any immediate danger. I was a little concerned about what would happen when the robots attacked my house, especially--I had warned Gaz they might attack tonight, but she had made no sign of wanting to get out and simply waved me away when I warned her to hide when they came. And what would happen when Zim saw that I wasn't there to be captured? He already knew I was on to him, was he expecting to get me tonight or did he know I would think to get away?

Peggy and I were silent for a while; we only spoke a bit in the next hour or so, and as we waited, I began to pace the yard feverishly, glancing up and down the road every few seconds. Twice I contacted Rodger on the walkie-talkie, asking if he or Jack had seen anything; both times, he reported no activity. "Maybe you were wrong," he said, an edge of contempt in his tone, before hanging up.

I went back to my pacing, suddenly worried. What if I _was_wrong? What if Zim wasn't after the entire town like I had thought? But then, what other explanation could there be? In a way that would be worse--it meant that Zim still _had_ an evil plan, but I had no way of figuring out what it was.

"Maybe Zim was smart and decided not to send one here," Peggy suggested as we approached an hour and a half with no activity. "You know, he knows we're onto him...maybe he thought it was too risky to send a robot right at your neighborhood."

"Maybe," I said, considering the point. But Zim wasn't usually that smart...he never passed up on an evil plan simply because it was a horribly ridiculous or nonsensical idea. Especially if it had any chance of causing me physical pain.

More silence, more pacing. Another half-hour passed, and I was beginning to feel depressed. By now Rodger was calling every few minutes to remind us of all the homework he could be doing. Peggy was looking discouraged.

I kept pacing, the image of Zim's mocking face in my mind when I considered meeting him at skool tomorrow, his plan having progressed and me, despite my previous boasting, having done nothing to stop him. And that made me remember something else from that conversation, something I had been thinking in the back of my head since Peggy arrived but wasn't quite sure how to bring up...

I cleared my throat. Peggy glanced up, looking bored. "Hey, Peggy, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I was talking to Zim earlier..."

I stopped; she looked at me, expectantly and--was I imagining it?--a little nervously. I cleared my throat and started again. "Well, I was just wondering--I don't know, if you've heard, but there are these two famous scientists missing--they're a married couple, the O'Sullivans, I think their first names are Patrick and Debbie--"

"Debra."

"Oh, so you know who they are?"

"No, never heard of them."

"...But you just corrected me on one of their names."

"Yeah."

"...That would imply you couldn't have just heard about them now."

"Really? I don't see how."

"...What?!"

I had to admit her complete lack of logic was throwing me a little. I opened my mouth to speak when a sudden beeping began to sound.

Peggy looked around, startled. "Huh? What's that?"

I reached into my pocket and took out a small device with a screen. My eyes widened. "It's a robot!" I cried. "Two streets over!"

"What?!"

"Yeah--I set up a few sensors around here...a few of the neighboring streets, a couple of them I already had up anyway, you know, so I can tell when Zim's approaching or anything like that...this one's actually from the time those werewolves kept breaking into people's houses to steal balogna. But yeah, it's a robot, it's just a couple of blocks away--where's the walkie-talkie--"

I picked it up off the ground. "Agent Rodger! Agent Freakout! Do you copy? Over!"

"Dib, I'm going home. It's late, I have skool tomorrow, and Jack is being a major pain in my--"

"We have a robot!"

"What?!"

"Yeah! Meet me and Peggy on Maple Street. Over and out!"

"Wait--"

I didn't stop to hear whatever objections Rodger was going to have this time; I turned and grabbed my things in a flash. "Come on!" I called to Peggy, racing off down the street.

"But--"

"Come on!"

Peggy hesitated, then came running after me. It was only a short run down two blocks before it came into view.

"There!"

I skidded to a stop--Peggy nearly ran into my back, just as Jack and Rodger appeared behind us. The robot was about a hundred yards away, coming out of a nearby house with a screaming child in its claws. With a careless flick the child vanished into its bubble-dome.

**"_AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"_**

In retrospect, I maybe should have stopped to warn the others to be quiet--or just have thought not to bring Jack along on this mission at all. But that's all in hindsight. Anyway, when he screamed, aside from causing the glass of a few nearby street lamps to spontaneously combust, it made the robot spun around, and in a sudden gigantic leap it was in the air, falling towards us with its tentacles outstretched.

"_Agh!_"

"_Agh!_"

"_Agh!_"

Four bodies jumped out of the way just as the robot landed, stood and spun around, its eye sliding over each of us in turn. Its tentacle shot out at Rodger, who was closest--with a quick duck to the side he managed to just slip away from its claws, roll on the ground, jump back up--

"PEGGY!" Jack screamed.

I spun around--while Rodger had been evading the first tentacle, the other had shot out and grabbed Peggy, who was screaming as the robot lifted her in its claw. My eyes went wide as she kicked feebly, letting out a cry of surprise.

"PEGGY!" Rodger screamed, racing forward.

Peggy screamed again, as the robot brought back its tentacle to throw her into its bubbly prison.

* * *

Because, you know, after making you wait a week and a half so that you're all desperate for story-ness, now you get a cliffhanger. ):-D I'm so evil.

Anyway. Hope you all enjoyed this, and I'll try to update soon! Please leave reviews, thanks for reading, and see you soon!


	18. CH 17: Not Just Crazy

This is gonna be a short chapter--originally this and the next chapter were going to be one, but I think it goes better with a break between the scenes, so here ya go. And it's probably better this way, since everyone seems to want me to update as soon as possible. Hope you all enjoy! I think you will. ;-)

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Chapter Seventeen  
Not _Just_ Crazy

"_Aaaaaggggghhhhh!_"

The robot lifted Peggy, was about to throw her into its dome--

And then suddenly froze.

Rodger and I had both been running towards it, instinctively (but probably hopelessly) hoping to do something to help her; Jack had been cowering on the ground, screaming, but all three of us stopped instantly as the robot paused. The night was suddenly so quiet that I could swear I heard its gears shifting inside, heard its hard drive suddenly processing something--

Its claw opened. Peggy let out a cry and fell to the ground.

Instantly the robots arms and legs began to disappear into its body.

"NO!"

Rodger and I were both moving again; Rodger went for Peggy, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her roughly away, while I jumped onto the transforming robot, quickly reaching into my pocket to pull something out--

"_Dib, you idiot, what are you doing?!_"

The robot's rockets burst to life--I let out a cry, slapped my hand against its side, heard the slight clang of metal on metal and jumped off, falling roughly onto the street--

_PFFFFFFT!_

The robot lifted off the ground, shimmered and vanished.

For a moment nobody moved or said anything; I lay on the ground, panting, Rodger was standing with Peggy, and Jack was still cowering with his hands over the back of his head. He looked up, blinking after a moment. "It gone?"

"Yeah," Rodger said simply. He seemed to have decided that Peggy was in no immediate danger, because he moved a tiny bit away from her, looking up into the sky where it had vanished.

"What just happened?" I asked, staring off in the same direction. I turned to look at Peggy. "Why didn't it take you?"

"I--I dunno," Peggy said, her voice shaking. "I just--"

"You don't know?!" I suddenly felt angry. All the frustrations of a very long and difficult week--a week where I had three times battled (and lost to) giant alien robots, been detained for police questioning and been accused of destroying half a block, been forced to clean up an entire classroom full of dried-up sludge, been forced to put up with Zim's sneering, snickering face, had gotten little or no sleep, rode a robotic bee, and been forced, again and again, to put up with these insane, annoying people--seemed to come exploding out of some dark, twisted knot in my chest. "What do you mean, you don't know?!"

"It's _like_ knowing, but in reverse," Rodger said coldly, crossing his arms. "You should be familiar with the concept, it seems to happen to you a lot..."

"Hey, _I'm _the one who found out about the robots, Rodger, the one who found a way to sneak into Zim's base--"

"Almost killing us in the process!"

"--and the one who figured out that the robots would be here tonight. I know plenty! If there's one thing I'm good at, it's knowing stuff! But what I _don't _know is what you two are hiding from me!"

"What do you--"

"Zim talked to me today! At skool, after the SEJI meeting! He said something about 'knowing you guys's secret,' or something--"

"What?!" Peggy said, suddenly looking fearful. Rodger sent her a quick, brief, annoyed look at the outburst, but kept a better poker face himself.

"You're going to believe that--" He seemed to struggle with the word for a moment, "--_alien_ over us? You said it yourself, he's evil and--"

"Yeah, but he's not stupid! Well--okay, actually, yeah, he is--but he's not smart! Coming up with a total and complete lie that has no basis in reality, or at least his weird twisted view of it, is way out of his league! And now I see these robot things about to capture one of you, and then suddenly stop out of nowhere?!"

"I--I--" Peggy stammered, glancing at Rodger, who continued to look at me stonily.

"So what is it? Huh? What was Zim talking about?" I asked, focusing on Peggy now, who seemed the weaker target for questioning.

"I--well--"

"What is it?! Huh?! _Tell me!_"

Peggy stood there, frozen. And then, all of a sudden, to my complete and utter shock and horror, she launched herself forward, threw her arms around me and with a long, despairing cry, screamed, "_They took Mom and Dad!_"

"GAH!" I cried, throwing up my arms away from her, as she buried her face in my shoulder and began to sob between words.

"They--horrible robots--took Dad--at work--missing--then they came to our house--took Mom--and--and--_WAAAHHH!_"

I stood there, arms held out rigidly away from my body, frozen, unable to take in a word of what she was saying in. I looked in horror at the others. Jack's head was tilted to one side, his eyes bugging out hugely. Even Rodger looked shocked, face pale, staring at Peggy and I with an inscrutable expression.

I turned back to Peggy, sobbing into my trench coat. I brought one hand up to pat her gently on the back. "Um...there, there?" I said awkwardly, feeling my face grow uncomfortably warm. "Now--what are you saying? I don't understand."

Peggy sniffled, taking her head a bit off my shoulder, but not enough for me to feel any more comfortable. "The robots," she said, her voice thick. "They took--our parents--took them away and we don't know where they are!" She suddenly dissolved into crying again and buried her face in my coat again.

"Your--your parents?" A click in my brain. "You don't mean the O'Sullivans, those scientists, do you?"

She nodded into my shoulder. "Uh-huh. Dad disappeared, he never came home from work one night, and then--then the next day, or night really, one of those--horrible robots broke into our house, and it got our mom--" Her eyes began to water again. "Rodger and I--we managed to run away, we got out of the house, and I don't think it wanted to follow us, make a big scene throughout the neighborhood--then the robot flew away, and it took Mom with it--and we think it took Dad too, it must have, but we don't know why or where they are or what, and--and--"

Thankfully, she drew away from me, but sat on the ground and began crying again, burying her face in her hands. I stood there awkwardly--I felt like I should go over and comfort her or something, but on the other hand really, _really_ didn't want to. I settled for crouching down to be a bit closer to her level.

"But--I don't understand. Why would Zim want to take your parents?"

"I don't--_sniff_--know," she said, wiping her eyes. "We didn't even know about him at all until you told us." _Sniff. _"We came here after Mom and Dad were kidnapped--we wanted to get far away from where we lived, we didn't know if the Capturebots would still be trying to get us too...that's why we first joined your club," she added, motioning limply to me and Jack. "We thought--_sniff_--a club of people who--_sniff_--deal with things like aliens and stuff might know...might be able to help."

I considered that silently for a moment. "But--you never mentioned that."

"That's because--because--"

"We didn't get a chance before they attacked the club meeting," Rodger said suddenly. "And after that...we were afraid we might have led them here. That they came to this city following us, and we--didn't want you to hate us for that."

I looked up, startled at his sudden addition to the conversation. He was looking carefully away from me, face firmly set into an angry frown, arms crossed over his chest. He looked years older than he really was, especially since I was looking up at him from a crouched-down position.

I suddenly had a vivid mental image of Peggy and Rodger, back at their house, standing in some dark hallway, probably in their pajamas in the middle of the night (Peggy's no doubt some radioactive pink), watching the gigantic robot grab and abduct their mother...I saw them turn to run, screaming from the house...I thought back to Gaz, just a few blocks away at our house, and wondered suddenly whether one of those robots had broken in there right now, was picking her up and--

I shook my head to break up the illusion, looking up again. Peggy had stopped crying, but still looked miserable. Rodger stood there, defiantly. Jack, for once, was silent, not muttering under his breath or bugging his eyes out, but comtemplating the scene quietly, but shivering a bit.

"But--that still doesn't make any sense," I said, frowning. "Why didn't that robot try to capture you? If it had attacked your family before, it seems like it would want you even more, if anything."

Both siblings seemed puzzled. "I--I don't know," Peggy admitted, wiping some tears from her face. "I can't explain that. I mean--we don't even know what this is all about, why this Zim guy would want our parents, or any of these other people..."

She trailed off. I paused, considering this, then stood up. "Well, we're gonna find out."

"What?" Jack said, looking startled.

"How?" Rodger asked, raising an eyebrow, his voice suddenly annoyed (and annoying) again. "The robot got away."

"Yeah," I said, a grin slowly spreading over my face as I reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small remote with a screen attached, which was already beeping and displaying its target. "But _I _put a tracking device on it."

Peggy, Rodger and Jack looked at me in astonishment.

"What?" I said, my smile widening. "You didn't think I jumped on that thing just because I was crazy, did you? _Don't answer that!_" I snapped suddenly, as Rodger opened his mouth to speak.

* * *

Well, congrats to those (such as Invaderzimfannumber1) who guessed that about the O'Sullivans...though there still may be more to that than meets the eye.

(Dramatic music plays.)

Okay, well, will try to update in the next few days; I honestly don't know when, if they'll be a "DotD" update before then, or if I'll focus on some of my non-_Zim_ stories...but in the next couple of days, most likely. See you then, thanks for reading, and as always, give me some reviews! Precious, precious reviews...


	19. CH 18: Flight Over the Factory

At some point when you've got this much homework undone and it's so late, it just seems pointless to start. Which isn't to say it _is_ pointless, but...anyway. You get a new chapter, I'll write the thing on Wordsworth before class tomorrow, everybody wins.

Okay, so, please read and review, as always, and then feel free to go and check out my new one-shot, "Namesake," over on the _IZ_ section. (It's already got more hits than the Labor Day story...huh.) That and this, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Eighteen  
Flight Over the Factory

"I really, _really _don't think this is a good idea!"

"Okay, do you want to have some chance of finding out what happened to your parents, or not?!"

"--Of course, but--"

"Well then, stop whining and keep peddling!"

I bent down over the handlebars of my own bike, feet twirling as fast as they could, glancing down at the tracking device's monitor every few seconds. Rodger and Peggy were riding ahead of me. Jack, who apparently neither owned nor knew how to ride a bike, was riding rather awkwardly on the back half of my seat; even peddling my hardest, the extra weight was causing me to fall behind the others, an inconvenient fact since I was the one who had the directions.

"Okay...turn right here...now go straight..."

I had expected the robot to be making more "house calls," or else to return directly to Zim's base; it turned out it wasn't doing either, however, but was heading, from the looks of it, downtown. Where was it going?

We soon found the answer.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This particular section of town was not one of the better ones--that much was apparent by the broken-down old buildings, the broken street lamps, and the rather colorful language spray-painted onto anything that stood still for more than a few seconds at a time. It was probably good that this place had been emptied early on, I thought--I would never have ridden my bike down here in the middle of the night under normal circumstances. It was too dangerous. But following an alien robot down here after it had cleaned out every inhabitant, that was fairly safe.

In one little corner of this part of town was the old factory. I knew about it vaguely, but not much more than the fact that it was really old, hadn't been used in decades, and was most likely the site of various activities Dad would have been horrified to find out I knew anything about. Fortunately, though, nobody was there doing any of that now; the factory was being put to a completely different (if still horrifying) use.

"Whoa," Jack said, jaw hanging open as the four of us stood beside our bikes, looking down from the shadows of an alley across the street.

"Oh, man," I muttered, eyes wide with shock.

Surrounding the factory, all over its land and spilling out onto the deserted street, were Zim's robots. There must have been a hundred of them or more, moving around, marching towards the factory. More and more of them kept arriving--I watched in amazement as a rocket-shaped robot suddenly appeared in midair, shimmering as it deactivated its cloaking field, landed, resumed its normal shape and joined the crowd. All the robots seemed to be going the same way--into the open front doors of the factory, disappearing into the darkness within.

"Zim's converted this place into a base?" Rodger asked, shaking his head in amazement.

"Eh...his place must be too small," Jack said, his eyes popping. "Didn't look big enough to accommodate so many robots...probably needs this place to hold all his prisoners, keep 'em locked up and enslaved!"

I sighed. "Jack, don't be--wait, that actually made sense." I turned to him, eyebrow raised. "You realize you just said something that actually mades sense, right?"

"I did?" From his tone I thought he actually might have been as surprised as I was.

"So...what do we do?" Peggy interrupted, looking down towards the building flooded with droids.

I looked back, shaking my head. "There's no way we can get in here, not now," I said. "We'll have to come up with some sort of a plan...come back tomorrow, or something, find some way to sneak in."

"Are you kidding?" Rodger asked; his normally dry voice had risen suddenly to a terrified squeak. "We can't go in there!"

"Well, we don't exactly have a choice! We're going to have to, if we want to stop Zim's plan or have any chance of finding your parents!"

Rodger crossed his arms and sulked, turning away from me and looking up at the sky. But he didn't argue with my point.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Then, "What the--"

"What?"

Rodger blinked and looked back at me. "Uh--nothing. I thought I just saw...something..."

"What?" I repeated.

"Uh, I don't know--just a kind of shimmer, up there over the factory..."

"A shimmer?"

"Yeah, in the sky..."

I looked up where he was looking; I couldn't see anything. I slowly reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a pair of mechanical goggles. I put them on over my glasses and began to play with the knobs of the side, watching as my view through them shifted and adjusted.

"Wow, you just have an endless supply of useful little gadgets, don't you?" Peggy said with a little nervous laugh, eyes darting between me and the robot army below. "What's that thing?"

"An Occular Spectral Decloaking Device."

"Ah, of course. ...What the heck is that?"

"Well, if I've got it working right it should let me see through Zim's cloaking fields, so that I can--" I broke off. "Uh-oh."

"What?" Rodger said quickly, looking back at me.

I gulped. "Let's get out of here."

"Wh--"

"No, hurry! I don't think he's seen us yet, but if he does--"

"'He?' 'He' who?" Peggy asked.

Her eyes wandered upward to what looked like empty air to her, but where, through the green night-visiony view of my goggles, I could see Zim's spaceshift hovering in the air.

* * *

Dib was right; Zim did not see them from his view on the ship, but he did see the factory and the army of robots below. He bent forward in his chair towards the ship's view screen, into the shadows that darkened his green face. His eyes were narrowed, and as they hit the light of the switches in front of him they seemed to sparkle bloodily, ruby-red and inhuman and narrowed in a look of dark, suppressed rage. His lip curled into a sneer as he watched the scene below, pure malice etched onto each line of his face.

"Ooh, whatcha doin', Mastah? You look all scary and intense."

"What?" Zim said, sitting up and drawing himself out of the shadows. "Oh, thank you, GIR, that's actually what I was going for." He leaned forward again, his lipless mouth twisted back into a girn, putting his hands together before him and looking darkly out of the window again. "I'm thinking about our _enemies._"

"Ooh, you mean Dib and his little friends? They so nice. They bring pizzas! 'Dey pizza fairies!"

"_Oooh, _that is what they want you to _believe_! But pizza fairies they are not, GIR. They are fairies of much darker, more horrible things. Fairies of doom, GIR, fairies of ruined missions and the end of our amazing conquest!"

"Oh. Never mind then," GIR said, taking another sip from his milkshake. Mmm. Jamocha!

Zim sighed, looking down out the window at the robots and the factory below. "They are planning something, GIR. I know they are. Something to bring an end to me and all my beautiful plans of burning and doom. But what?! What?!"

GIR sucked on his milkshake. Zim bent down lower over the control panels, his frown deepening, deep in thought.

His time was limited, that he knew. The robots...how fast would they be able to finish liquidating the town? Not long, that was sure. It could take a few more days...or it could even be finished by tomorrow...

"Tomorrow, then," Zim whispered, leaning back in his chair. He looked all dark and scary again, GIR thought, still attempting to draw up his frozen yummy through the straw. "Tomorrow, we put a stop to the Dib-monkey and his little _friends..._once and for all."

He threw back his head suddenly and laughed, throwing up his clawed hands, the walls of his Voot Cruiser throwing his shadow against the screen with its raw, electrical power.

"...And then we get ice cream?"

Zim's laughter stopped. "No, GIR, no ice cream!"

"AAAHHH! You're no fun."

* * *

More Zim in the next chapter, though GIR will be staying home.

Well, I hope you enjoyed, and now it is time for _BED!_ Because I seriously need more sleep...bad JoeMerl, staying up so late every night. This story will update soon...and "Death of the Dib" too. At least in theory. I've got the basic outline for the next few chapters done, but they still need work...

_Yes, work this moron is too lazy to do._

**Mike, **get back in your own story! I can still find someone to replace you!

_He's not even confining the stupid multiple-personalities-talking-to-each-other thing to one the right story now...he is psychotic, this one, isn't he?_

(Realizing he must really seem crazy to anybody who hasn't read "Death of the Dib") Grr...anyway, read and review, and bye for now. **Mike, **get back here! (Runs after him.)

Also...um, Happy Patriot Day. Not that it's a very happy holiday...yeah.


	20. CH 19: Lockered on Target

You know what? The end-notes are long enough, let's skip right to the story. ;-)

* * *

Chapter Nineteen  
Lockered on Target

"Okay, so we'll all meet tomorrow after skool, and then we'll come up with some sort of plan to get into that factory. Got it?"

Rodger had a dark look. Jack looked terrified. Peggy looked barely braver than Jack, but she nodded. "We'll be there."

"Okay. Guess I'll see you guys tomorrow, then."

The group broke up; Jack, looking as usual like an overgrown, nervous little rodent, went scurrying off in whatever direction his home was. Peggy and Rodger got on their bikes and rode off together for their home.

It suddenly occurred to me, as I saw them ride off, that I didn't know where they lived, other than that Rodger had vaguely mentioned it being downtown. And it occurred to me that, if their parents were kidnapped by Zim as part of whatever plan he had constructed, they were probably living alone somewhere. I wondered where. Did they even have a place to stay? I suddenly had a disturbing image of the two living under a bridge or something, homeless and alone...I shook my head to clear the image away. No, that couldn't be right, I thought. They didn't look like they needed clothes or food or anything; they must have somewhere to stay. Still, I wondered where.

I raised my hand and opened my mouth, thinking of calling them back to ask them, maybe even invite them to come stay at my house--even if they had a house or an apartment or hotel room or whatever, somehow the thought of them there alone, left with nothing to do but wonder where their kidnapped parents were, was unsettling. But I hesitated, and before I could speak they turned a corner and vanished down the street.

I got on my bike and slowly made my way back home.

When I arrived on my street I found the place silent. Only a few lights were on in the windows, and I couldn't see any movement behind them. One front door stood slightly ajar, swinging in the wind.

My heart froze in my chest.

"Gaz."

I peddled home as fast as I could and burst into the house. As soon as I ran into the living room I threw back my head and began screaming.

"Gaz? GAZ?! GAAAZ?! _WHERE ARE YOU?!_"

"Right _here_, Dib."

My head snapped around. "Huh?"

Gaz was sitting calmly on the couch, Game Slave still in her hand. If not for the plate of leftover pizza crust in front of her I would have thought she hadn't moved an inch in the hours I had been gone.

"Oh. Heh-heh. Sorry." I very slowly and quietly shut the door behind me, feeling my face burn. "But--how are you here? Outside it looks like the whole street's been deserted!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! Didn't you notice?!"

She looked up for a moment, shrugged, and went back to her game. "Nothing happened here."

"So...what? Zim's weird freaky alien robots came to every house in the neighborhood--_except_ ours?"

"Looks like."

"But that--doesn't make _any_ sense! He already knows we're onto him, why doesn't he..."

I gave up in mid-rant; instead I slumped forward, feeling my eyes beginning to close. I wondered vaguely how many hours of sleep I had managed to catch in the last week. Maybe about ten? "I'm going to bed," I muttered, dragging myself up the stairs. "Call for me if something sensible happens."

"Whatever," Gaz muttered, not even looking up from her game. Needless to say, she had no reason to call me for the rest of the night.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The next day it was confirmed--the neighborhood was definitely empty. I could just walk into any of the neighbors' houses, walk around, turn back and not meet a living soul. Gaz and I walked to skool on completely deserted streets all the way there. There weren't even any cars, no noise, nothing. It was _really_ creepy.

At least for me.

"I wish Zim would have abducted those stupid birds, too," Gaz grumbled, as we passed a mother robin singing mellifluously to her babies. It almost seemed to look affronted as we passed, glaring Gaz down before resuming its song with a slightly haughty air.

The skoolyard was almost empty--instead of the usual scores of kids, there were maybe ten of us waiting for skool to start. The hallways were empty. The boys' bathroom was empty. Ms. Bitters' class...

...was full?

I blinked as I entered the room, startled--everyone was back?! How on Earth? Had Zim released them, why would he do that, how--

And then I blinked and realized I didn't know half the kids in there. And then I realized that Gaz was sitting in the chair next to mine, where Aki normally sat.

"What the--"

"Dib!"

"AGH!"

I jumped and spun around; Ms. Bitters was looming behind me, bent forward like a snake, teeth bared and growling. "Take your seat!" she snapped.

I let out a strangled cry and ran to my seat beside Gaz, giving her a questioning look. She merely looked annoyed, fingers unconsciously tapping Aki's desk as if she had an invisible Game Slave there. I knew she usually played it in Mr. Elliott's room; clearly, though, she was smart enough to know not to try it here, at least not until Ms. Bitters got bored of the class herself and stopped caring what we did.

"As you can see, we have a few guest students with us today," Ms. Bitters growled, slithering over to take her seat behind her desk and clasp her hands together, glaring. "It seems many of my fellow teachers have been taking off this week for that stupid chili festival, so _I'm_ having to take up some of the slack. _PUT THAT PAPER AIRPLANE DOWN!_" she suddenly screamed, and a boy in the back of the class screamed and fell out of his chair, the airplane he was throwing flopping feebly to the ground. The kid in the next seat who had been planning to receive it gulped.

Ah, of course, I thought. Zim was kidnapping teachers too. Too bad he hadn't thought to get Ms. Bitters--then I could get out of class and try to find out what he was up to. But, just like Gaz, I had a feeling he was smart enough to know not to mess with her.

Ms. Bitters began to call roll--which seemed pointless, with so few of her own students and so many others. As she did I sat up and looked around, trying to see how many of my normal classmates were there. Aside from me, there was just the Letter M and Zita...nobody else...

And then it hit me: Zim was gone too.

"Gaz! Zim is gone!" I hissed, leaning over and interrupting her imaginary game on the desk.

She opened her mouth to respond--probably scathingly--when the door burst open, and he appeared, slamming it behind him and pressing himself against the door.

"Zim! You're late," Ms. Bitters growled, leaning forward, her voice descending to a dangerous hiss. "Where were you?"

"I was...I was..."

I raised my eyebrow, wondering the same thing. Zim didn't look too good--actually kind of banged up, his wig was slightly askew, his clothes were torn and burned, and he even had a small cut across the side of his head, which seemed to be wet with half-dried green blood. I considered jumping up to point out this rather obvious fact, but Zim's cry interrupted me before I could.

"I was in the Earth bathroom!" He raised his finger dramatically to emphasize this point.

"Just sit down!" Ms. Bitters snapped.

Zim saluted. "Yes, Ms. Bitters, sir!" And he quickly scuttled over to his own chair, sat down and folded his hands innocently. He looked confused as he seemed to notice that he was surrounded by students other than his normal neighbors.

I looked him over, thinking. _What's happened to him? _I wondered, biting my lip. Not that this was the first time he had come to skool in a disheveled state. He had several times before...sometimes thanks to his stupid robot dog, or some failed experiment, or, most satisfyingly, thanks to me. (The same thing had happened in reverse too, though, just as often.) But could this have something to do with the robots? Maybe this prisoners had staged a coup?

Ms. Bitters lesson interrupted my thoughts.

"Today, class, we're going to be learning about the Great Depression, and why you can all look forward to reliving it in the very near future. The story begins with a _doomed _individual by the name of Kaiser Wilhelm, whose horrible defeat in the First World War led--what is it, Zim?"

Zim lowered his hand and stood up. "May I please be excused, Ms. Bitters-beast?"

"What for?"

"I need to use the bathroom, please."

"I thought you said you just _went_ to the bathroom."

Zim's green skin paled. I grinned. _Yeah, Zim, get caught in your own stupid lie..._

"Um...yes. But that was for dookying. This time it is to, um..." He searched desperately for an excuse. "Powder my nose!"

"Alright," Ms. Bitters said apathetically, waving her hand.

I jumped up, outraged. "Ms. Bitters! You can let him get away with _that!_"

"Why not?" she demanded, cocking her head to one side.

I counted the reasons off on my fingers. "One, that's an excuse only a girl would use. Two, even if he _was_ a girl, it wouldn't be a valid excuse to get out of class. Three, this is all just part of his evil plan to enslave mankind, and four, _he doesn't even have a nose!_"

I pointed one finger dramatically at Zim, who quickly tried to cover up his face as if to hide his noselessness. Ms. Bitters leaned back in her chair and considered this.

Finally she spoke. "Your objections have been duly noted, Dib. Nevertheless, Zim, you may leave."

"Yes!" he said, pulling a fist to his chest triumphantly, then turning to give me an evil glare and a horrible grin. I ground my teeth. He jumped up and ran out the door--before it even closed I could see his spider legs begin to fold out from his PAK.

I sat down, defeated, laying my head on my desk. Ms. Bitters resumed her lecture. "Anyway, due to the Kaiser's _doomed_ alliance with Austria-Hungary, Germany soon descended into economic ruin which--"

"Ms. Bitters!" I was on my feet before I had even realized what I was planning to do. "I, uh, need to use the bathroom too!"

"Why?" she asked, looking at me quizzically.

What, she wanted me to paint her a picture? I cleared my throat awkwardly. "To, uh...powder my...ears?"

A few kids, Gaz included, gave me looks. Most were too busy not listening to anything happening around them to notice.

Ms. Bitters considered. "Fine," she said airily, waving her hand again. "If they're going to stick out like that, they might as well look good."

I began to walk away from my desk. "Thank you, Ms. Bitters, I--stick out?" Instantly my hand went to my ears; they didn't really stick out, did they? "What do you mean, stick--"

"_Just go!_"

I went. I could look into any apparent ear problems later.

Zim was pretty easy to track--the hallways were so empty and quiet that I could hear his footsteps and the whirring of his PAK-legs from a whole hallway away. Apparently he wasn't bothering to keep hidden, and neither did I--I ran down the halls after him, looking at each classroom door as I passed, nearly all of which were silent with signs taped in place: _Mr. Elliott's class report to Ms. Bitters, room 13...Mrs. Jacobs' class report to Mr. Roberts, room 20...Miss Jones' class report to Mr. Gershwin, room 33..._

I heard a voice echoing from around the corner. "Hey, you need a hall pass--"

_Crash._

When I arrived, the hall monitor was looking dazed and confused, pulling himself out of the trash can. I ran past him, torn between anger at Zim for doing that and gratitude that at least I wouldn't have to deal with him either. That kid was annoying.

Where was he going, though?

I soon found out: Mr. Gershwin's class.

I turned another corner and suddenly saw Zim halfway down the hall, retracting his PAK-legs and falling expertly to the floor--I jumped and quickly hid beside a row of lockers, pressing my back against them to keep from being seen. Zim didn't seem to realize I was there; I carefully peeked around my hiding place and watched as he paused, hesitated, and then knocked on Mr. Gershwin's door.

The door opened a moment later, and I heard Mr. Gershwin's voice. "Yes?"

"Yes, hello. I am a completely normal hyuman pig-boy. The office sent me down here to collect the equally-completely-normal hyuman pig-girl called Peggy. Could you please surrender her into my custody? Pretty please?"

"Er...I suppose."

"Thank you," Zim said, giving the closest thing to a sweet smile that I imagined his face capable of producing.

Mr. Gershwin vanished. I held my breath and watched as a moment later, he returned with Peggy, who took one look at Zim and turn wide-eyed with fear. She turned around and looked like she was going to object, but Mr. Gershwin had already turned around and closed the door behind him, leaving the two of them--plus me, hidden ten feet away--alone in the hallway.

"Hello..._Peggy,_" Zim said, leaning forward, fake eyes glittering with real malicious...ness. Wait, I think the word is just "malice." The point is, glittering, and not in a good way.

"Oh. Hey, um, _Zim, _isn't it?" Peggy asked nervously, taking a step back, her hand reaching behind her for the doorknob. "H-how's it going? Is that a new hairpiece? Oh, look at the time, I better be going--"

She started to open the door, but Zim leaned forward, putting one hand against it to keep it shut. I could only see his face from the side, but it was twisted into a look of anger worse than I had ever seen it before. I suddenly wondered if I should jump out of my hiding place--maybe he would run off if he knew it would be the two of us against him--

"I know that you're working with the Dib-stink," Zim now sneered, eyes narrowing coldly. "I know you two are up to something."

"I-I really don't--"

"Do not lie to me!" Zim suddenly screamed, rearing up and pointing dramatically. "I am too smart to fall for your little games and _tricks._ I know what you are up to!"

"You do?"

"More or less! And whatever it is, you had better _stop_ helping him, or so help me, something--_bad_ will happen to you. Do you hear me?"

He ended his threat in a very low voice, almost a whisper, so low I had to strain my ears to hear him. Peggy gulped. "I don't--"

"Do you have any idea who I am?!" Zim suddenly screamed again; Peggy and I both jumped, it was impossible that the people in the nearby classroom couldn't hear, but nobody came out to investigate. "I am the mighty _Zim! _I could get the Tallests to blast your planet into stardust if I requested it, so you had better not cross me, or--or--_else_!"

_TSEEW!_

"Agh!"

I jumped; a leg had suddenly shot out of Zim's PAK, whirled around, and shot a blast of energy at the same row of lockers I was hiding behind. A locker halfway down the row exploded, its door bursting in an explosion of melted metal; Peggy backed up against the classroom door in shock, mouth opened, shaking from head to foot.

It took me a moment to realize the shot hadn't been directed at me; I stood frozen, and only peeked after a moment of silence as Zim, without another word, spun around and stormed off, his metal arm retracting into his PAK as he went. He stomped right past me without noticing. I was too shocked to make any kind of move; I gazed over at Peggy, who was standing looking horrified and close to tears.

My immediate reaction was to rush over to say or do something, but just as I started, the bell rang, and the door to every actually-occupied classroom burst open, filling the halls with an abnormally low, but still significant number of students. Before I had a chance to reach her Peggy had turned and run into the throng, vanishing from sight. I froze, my hand half-out as if to reach for her. Some kid pushed me roughly out of the way.

"Watch where you're going," he snapped (ignoring the fact that I hadn't been going anywhere). I blinked, snapped out of my trance. I lowered my hand and turned to walk back to Ms. Bitters class to collect my things, walking past the kid who had pushed me, who was now standing in a trance of stunned disbelief himself.

"Hey--what happened to my locker?!" he demanded, but I ignored him, my mind entirely on Peggy and Zim.

* * *

Well, there was a bit of awkwardness in his delivery, but Zim finally got to be all dark and creepy without being interrupted. The last few times GIR's came to mess it all up. Wonder how Zim kept him away this time.

(Cut to Zim's base, GIR standing in the corner with his arms over his eyes.)

GIR: 9,999,998, 9,999,999, 10,000,000! (Looks up.) Ready or not, Master, here I come!

Hee-hee. Anyway, not sure when this will update again; I got a million things to update, then I may cut back for a day or two, so...maybe a weekish before another update. Hoping to finish this fic by October 1, but probably won't make it. In the meantime, you can read "Endorsements of the Doomed," which just updated and will again soon; a humorous _Avatar: the Last Airbender_ one-shot I'm planning to post soon (involving my favorite character, who sadly only appeared in one episode); and "Death of the Dib," which will update...eventually. Which leads to a question for readers of that story--I'm doing a chapter that is going to focus on Louie, but don't know if it should be in first-person or third person form--in other words, if Louie should be narrating or it should just be "Louie said, Louie did," etc. I'm leaning towards the latter, but will take opinions into account.

Okay, these author's notes are _way _too long. Hope you enjoyed, please leave reviews, especially you dirty moochers who have been reading this _without_ reviewing. Come on, tell me what you think, good, bad or otherwise. Bye for now!


	21. CH 20: The Final Meeting

Remember how I said I was planning to get this fic done by the end of September? Yeah, that's not gonna happen; I would have to write, like, a chapter a day to do that, and sorry, I'm not going to. :-( According to my current plan (which is always subject to change), there will be twenty-six chapters (not counting the prologue). There might also be a epilogue, and then maybe some "bonus material." So, yeah, you get a few more weeks worth of this story. Yay for you. :-D

* * *

Chapter Twenty  
The Final Meeting  
(At least in this story.)

"He _threatened you?!_"

Jack's eyes widened at the harsh tone; he slid down his seat a little, cowering. "Okay, Rodger, calm down--" I began.

"_NO,_ I will not calm down! That green freak _threatened_ you with a_ laser?!_"

Peggy nodded nervously. Rodger's face twisted into a horrible grimace, but I interrupted him before he could start screaming again.

"Okay, look, don't--don't worry about it, okay? Zim's not the kind of person to--act on that kind of a threat. He just does stupid stuff, bio-engineer weasels to shoot lasers and that kind of thing--"

"Um, hello?! He's kidnapped most of the city! And lasers can still hurt if they're coming out of something stupid."

I had no argument for that; I had learned _that_ from personal experience. (Stupid laser weasels...) And I had to admit, I saw Rodger's point--true, _normally _Zim's plans were stupid and weird, and liable to fall apart on their own without my even needing to interfere too much, but Zim clearly had upgraded his style lately.

"Okay...you're right," I said finally. "But look, I've been thinking about it--I mean, in a way this is almost a good thing--"

"_What?!_"

"No, hear me out! I've never seen Zim that freaked out before--normally he does nothing but brag about his plans, no matter how stupid they are. If he's actually going around threatening us over this, he must actually be scared that we could stop him! There must be some kind of--of weakness in his defenses, or something, that he knows we can exploit! He must know that we're close to stopping him!"

"What do you mean, close?! We're nowhere _near_ stopping whatever his plan is! We don't know anything _about_ his plan!" Rodger raged, hands clenched as though wanting to strangle me.

"Maybe we're closer than we think! We already know a lot, we know about his robots and the people he's capturing, we found his new base--all we have to do is sneak in there tonight and--"

"Are you crazy?! That psychopath just showed us he could blow us into little pieces, and you want to _sneak into his base--_we barely survived that the first time, and that was one where you _kind of _knew what you were doing! We're going into this one blind!"

"It doesn't matter! If we want to have any chance of rescuing all those people, including your _parents--_"

"I'm not going to risk my life or my sister's--"

"We won't be risking any lives--"

"That guy is a friggin' psychopath--"

"Look, all we have to do is go and--"

"I'm not going," Peggy said.

Somehow she made her small voice heard over Rodger and my screaming; we both froze and turned to her. Even Jack's wide eyes snapped around from their constant probing of the room to stare at her.

I blinked. "What?"

"I'm not going, Dib. I'm sorry. I c-can't."

Peggy was sitting with her legs pulled up, hugging them against her chest, looking small and weak. Scared. Zim's threat had really freaked her out, I realized.

"Thank you!" Rodger said, motioning to her. "Finally, some sense."

"But--but Peggy, you guys have to come!" I objected. "I mean, I know you're scared, but--"

"Scared?! Dib, did you see what he did to that locker?!" Her voice was high-pitched, nearly hysterical. "And--and--look!" She pulled down the shoulder of her dress. "I'm still bandaged up from the _last _time we tried to mess with Zim! We can't--I mean, we could really get hurt--"

"No we won't! You guys, I've done this tons of times before, and I--"

"Well, we weren't there _then,_ were we?" Rodger said, crossing his arms and giving another of his trademarked glares. "So you can just do it without us _this_ time."

My mouth hung open. I looked from him to Peggy. She turned away from me, mouth quivering slightly. I felt suddenly deflated.

Jack cleared his throat. "I'll go," he grunted under his breath.

I spun around. "You mean it?!" Never mind that two minutes ago I would have considered that a curse rather than a blessing, at that moment I wanted to know that I at least had _some _support from the other SEJI members.

"Yeah." He didn't look at all happy about it, though; he had resumed his scared-rodent stance, nibbling nervously at his knuckles. "I mean, if this Zim'll be tryin' to do some sort of horrible experiments...probably tryin' to steal the whole town's toenails or whatnot...I-I'll help."

"Oh, _thank_ _you,_" I muttered. Seriously, at this point, I'd take whatever validation I could get. I turned back to the others. "Come on, guys. You two seriously aren't going to let me and Jack just go into this alone, are you?"

Rodger crossed his arms and stared at me. Peggy still didn't look up. "I'm sorry, Dib," she muttered.

And that was that. The club that had started with only five members to begin with had now been whittled down to two.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"I can't believe this," I grumbled, kicking a can on the sidewalk with all my strength. My joy at having at least one more person willing to trust me had ebbed since the meeting ended; now I was just feeling bitter, bitter at Rodger, bitter at Peggy, bitter at Zim...even a little bitter at Keef and Jack, though I knew consciously that those made the least sense of all.

I hated to admit it, but I could understand why Rodger and Peggy didn't want to break into Zim's factory base--it was true, there was always a good chance we could get captured, wind up having horrible alien experiments done to us or whatever. But come on! It was Zim! It wasn't like he was competent. And if they were so scared of something like that, they shouldn't have joined the club in the first place, I decided. No self-respecting Eyeball agent would balk at an assignment because it was too dangerous; true, there were risks, but you knew when you signed up that the chances of getting abducted, possessed or vampirized were high. I thought with a sick sense of dread that at the end of the month I was supposed to contact the Swollen Eyeballs and report on how my efforts at the club were going; what was Darkbooty going to say when I told him that the club now had an astounding one other member, who by all objective standards was probably insane?

Of course, most SEN members were probably insane...but that was beside the point.

Oh well, I thought. At least I still had Jack. And Rodger had been right--I had defeated Zim dozens of times before, without anybody else's help. Sure, Zim seemed a little tougher than usual; but I had Jack to help me, and I had figured out ways around most of his security systems before. All I had to do was go home and get some equipment--my laptop, for one, a few more EMPs...that disk with the security system from Tak's ship, that would be useful if I had to break any Irken codes...

Yeah. As long as I had Jack's help and all of my usual tricks, I could get through this fine without their help.

I should have known that that kind of thought would jinx me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"_What happened to my room?!_"

I stepped through the threshold, mouth hanging open, making vague gasping sounds in lieu of being able to breath. I felt the floorboards creak under me; it wouldn't have been a surprise if they were about to collapse under my minor weight.

The room had been destroyed. The walls were blasted with huge black burns. The carpet was covered in ash. My bed had been thrown against the wall. And every single piece of technology--my computer, my hard drives, my laser guns and EMPs and scanners--were all gone.

"Dib! _DIB_!"

I turned dully and saw Gaz's shadow on the wall outside. "Okay, Dib, I don't know what you did to Dad's lab, but when he gets back he's gonna be _really_--" She stopped at my doorway, eyes temporarily widening the smallest bit. "Huh."

"Gaz! Duh--whuh--huh--" I motioned pointlessly at the wreckage around me, unable to form any kind of coherent speech for several moments. "All--stuff--not here! Gone! Taken--dah!"

"Huh," she repeated. "Same thing with the basement, too."

"I mean, who could have gotten in here?! Who would have come and--wait, _what_?!" I demanded, spinning around to gape at her now.

"Yeah. I was just down there looking for Dad's hypersonic tweezers, but everything's gone. Same as this place." She motioned around to my destroyed room.

I heard a small, pathetic whimpering sound come out of my mouth. Without thinking I dropped onto my knees on the bedroom floor and covered my face in my hands. "This isn't happening, this isn't happening..."

"_What_ isn't happening?"

"ZIM!" I screamed, removing my hands to clutch hopelessly at the air around me. "He--I don't know how, but he's managed to break through all the security systems, managed to get into my room and--and--this!" I threw my arm around again to encompass the room. "Now I have nobody to help me _and _no equipment! There's no way I can sneak into his new base and stop his evil plan without any of my stuff! He's actually done it, Gaz! He's thought of everything! Whatever it is he's planning, I have no way to find out what it is and no way to stop him! He's finally won, Gaz!"

I put my face in my hands again, pressing my glasses against eyes that were starting burn with tears--tears of anger, frustration, hatred, and quite possibly the deepest and most horrible depression I had ever felt in my entire life. I was totally helpless. There was nothing I could do...no way I could get past Zim's security systems, hack into his computer, fight him or any of his insane inventions...for the first time in my life, I simply had no idea what to do. I was helpless. Beaten.

I let out a dry sob. I heard Gaz's footsteps move through the ashy carpet until she was standing beside me. I felt her place a hand onto my shoulder. I paused in my sob when I felt it. It was soft, gentle, comforting. Loving.

Then felt the back of that same hand slam painfully into the side of my head.

"_OW!_" I cried, grabbing my ear, which already felt red with pain. "What was that for?!"

"Don't be emo, Dib. You know I can't _stand _emo." Her grimacing face relaxed and she spun around on her heels. "Now come on."

"Huh?" I got up off my knees and followed her down the hall to her room. She went in; I knew from experience to stop at the threshold. "Where are we going?"

"To stop Zim's evil plan. _Duuuhhh._" She swung her backpack over her shoulder, grabbed her laptop under one arm and extracted a baseball bat out from under her bed.

I could feel my entire face burst into a smile. I probably looked dangerously similar to Keef.

"You--you mean it?! You're gonna help me?! You've finally decided to take my advice and dedicate your life to helping me fight the evil paranormal beasts that threaten to destroy mankind?!"

She hit me on the side of the head again. I winced and stumbled back. Well, at least she hadn't used the bat.

"_No,_" she said, marching past me into the hallway and heading purposefully towards the stairs. "I'm not going to start wasting all my time trying to fight Zim like _you, _Dib. Because Zim is an idiot and I have better things to do. It's just that this time, there's a chance that he might actually _win,_ and I'm not going to let _that_ happen, _okay_?"

She stopped and turned her head just enough to glare at me out of one eye. I stared at her for a moment. Then I grinned again.

"Okay, sure thing, Gaz. And thanks. For helping me."

She growled. She might have hit me again if I was within arm's reach. She turned and marched towards the door again, with me following behind her, feeling positively sunny.

Forget Peggy or Rodger. Forget all my equipment. I had learned from years and years of experience, if you had Gaz on your side, there was no _way_ you could lose.

* * *

Aww...Membrane family love. Of a sort.

Incidently, question for the room--do you think I should change the story's settings to list Gaz as the secondary character instead of Zim? She wound up being in this story more than I had originally expected, while Zim winds up appearing a lot less (as some of you have noted ;-). So, in your opinions, should this story be listed as Dib and Zim or Dib and Gaz as the main characters?

I will try to get the next update done soon, and after _that_ comes the two chapters I'm _really_ looking forward to...yay. :-D In the meantime be on the lookout for a new "Death of the Dib" chapter, and of course, please leave reviews. (And feel free to go to my profile and read any other stories I've written. Like "A Weekend at EARL's," for example. I mean, there's no particular reason to...but, you know. (whistles innocently))


	22. CH 21: Break In Again

Sorry for the late-ish update, but I had lots of stuff to do and this chapter was a bit harder than I was expecting. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Twenty-One  
Break-In (Again)

"So, where is this stupid little friend of yours, Dib?"

"I don't know...probably hiding...Jack! Jack!"

"_Egh!_" cried a nearby tree.

"There he is. Jack, get out of there. It's just me. And, uh...my sister."

"Sister?!" Jack cried, as though terrified of the concept. His face emerged out of a hole in the tree trunk, and with great effort he began to squeeze his large body through it. He fell out onto the ground with a loud shriek.

"Uh, yeah. Jack, this is Gaz. Gaz, this is Jack."

Jack clambered to his feet, wiping dead leaves from his clothes as he squinted at her. "Hello. Is she a vampire?" he asked quickly, turning to me.

"Um, no." I paused. "Though I _can_ see how you might have gotten that impression..."

Gaz growled. I saw her fingers tighten on the bat's handle. Uh-oh.

"But uh--anyway. She's going to be helping us. She helps me against Zim...sometimes."

"When there's nothing good on TV," Gaz explained, swinging her bat lightly through the air.

"Oh. Okay then." Jack scratched the back of his neck and gave her an awkward smile. Gaz glared back at him and gave another swing of the bat, missing his nose by a millimeter. He stumbled back and fell on his large backside, smile vanished.

I cleared my throat as he climbed to his feet again. "So, uh--I guess we better be going. Lots of...alien-stopping to do and...stuff."

Jack's head bobbed as he sent another nervous look at Gaz. "Did you bring all the stuff?" he asked, eyes darting around wildly again.

"...No," I said, turning slightly red. "Zim thought ahead and attacked my house. So, our high-tech arsenal of weapons has kind of been reduced to a baseball bat" I motioned to Gaz "an old water gun" I held it up "and Gaz's laptop. Do you have anything?"

"Nothin' much," he muttered, taking off his backpack and shuffling through it. "Just some stuff my uncle lemme borrow...eh, some garlic, a couple of crosses, some wooden stakes..."

"Huh?" Gaz raised her eyebrows. "That's stuff for vampires, not aliens."

"Yeah...but my uncle didn't have any alien stuff handy. He's good with vampires, though, they're his specialty. He's a paranormal investigator, see, a professional one and everything."

"A member of the Swollen Eyeballs?!" I asked excitedly--maybe Agent Giles of Agent Stoker?

"Er, I don't think so."

"Oh." I paused, thinking. "Got any holy water?"

"Uh, yeah, I think so--yeah, I got four bottles right--" _CRASH._"Eh-heh. Make that three bottles," he said, turning somewhat pink.

"Well, water's useful, and the holiness can only _help_ against Zim," I said dryly, as Jack handled bottles to Gaz and me. "Anything else?"

"Eh...some silver bullets. Ain't got no gun to put 'em in, though...other'n that, just some matches, a flashlight and some toothpaste."

"Huh? Why's there toothpaste in your uncle's vampire hunting kit?"

"Well, vampires cause tooth decay, don't they?"

Gaz gave me a look that clearly showed her thoughts about my taste in friends. I sighed. "Um...sure. Let's just try to hurry over to the factory, okay?"

Jack's face paled, but he nodded. "Alrighty then." I had to admit I felt the same way myself.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The robots were already out.

I pedaled awkwardly, Jack again riding in the back, but this time with the added onus that I had out my Occular Spectral Decloaking Device and was checking it every few seconds. And with good reason--three times we had to duck out of the way as a cloaked robot glided by down the street, heading out in search of the town's few remaining inhabitants.

This was part of the plan; we knew, approximately, what times the robots were active, and since we had seen them returning to the factory the previous night, we knew roughly when they would get back. Our hope was to get to the factory while they were out doing their kidnapping thing, when it would (hopefully) not be too heavily guarded against any intrusions. Assuming all the robots were deployed at any given time, that meant we would only have Zim and his less intelligent minions to deal with if we were caught.

"Is this the place?" Gaz asked.

"Yeah," I said, screeching the bike to a stop. I jumped off and removed my helmet, leaving it hanging on the handlebars. Gaz dismounted her surprisingly girly pink bike beside me.

"Are there any robots?" Jack asked in a very small voice.

I checked. "No. It doesn't look like it's guarded, but it's hard to be sure...Zim could have hidden cameras or something." I took off the Occular Spectral Decloaking Device and stashed it in my coat, taking out my water gun instead. "Okay. Are we ready?"

"Yeah, whatever. Let's just get this over with," Gaz muttered, hefting up her bat.

We approached the factory. I was half-expecting that we _would _be attacked by robots, or run into an electrified force field, or something, but the place really did seem to be deserted.

We reached the door. Which was locked, tight. The door was mechanical, with what looked like a normal security system, a normal little keyboard with human numbers.

"Okay, there's some kind of security system. We're going to need to break through it's programming...Gaz, hand me your laptop."

She growled--under normal circumstances there was a very strict rule about me touching any of her possessions, but she handed it over begrudgingly. I connected it to the keypad and began to type furiously.

"Okay, if this is anything like Tak's ship...I should be able to...let's see..." BEEP BEEP. ACCESS DENIED.

"Huh, okay. Well, if I just--"

BEEP BEEP. ACCESS DENIED.

"Huh. Well, if I try _this,_ maybe I can--"

BEEP BEEP. ACCESS DENIED.

"You know, the textbook definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Just so you know."

"Ugh!" I keep typing, but the ACCESS DENIED message just kept reappearing on the screen. "I can tell this is no normal security system...but it's different than the ones Zim usually uses, and it's even harder than the ones Tak had on her ship...but there's got to be a way...maybe if--_AGH!_"

Gaz's computer suddenly let out a blast of electricity through my body, sending me flying backwards to crash into Jack, who let out a screech and fell with me to the ground. I groaned, nose taking in the smell of burnt hair and skin

"_Ugh,_" Gaz said, exasperated. "Let me try."

"Wait, Gaz!" I sat up quickly, rushing over to her on my hands and knees. "Don't do anything, it's an extremely dangerous program, one false move and--"

"ACCESS GRANTED," the computer said, speaking aloud in a pleasant female voice. "HAVE A NICE DAY."

The door slid open. I gaped.

Gaz sighed. "Come _on,_" she muttered, stashing the laptop back in her backpack and picking her bat back up before marching purposefully into the factory.

I glanced over at Jack. We slowly followed Gaz inside.

I fumbled with the flashlight in my coat pocket, flicking it on and looking around--we seemed to be in a very dark hallway, wide enough for the three of us to stand beside each other but still somehow suffocating in the utter blackness. "There doesn't seem to be anything here..." I muttered.

"Are you sure this is where Zim's operating from?" Gaz asked.

"Yes! We saw, like, a hundred of those robots here yesterday, not to mention Zim watching over them all--come on, let's go this way."

I motioned ahead, into the darkness. Gaz walked on swiftly, her bat swinging over her shoulder with each step. I could hear Jack's teeth chattering beside me, flashlight shaking as we followed.

"So, what exactly are we expecting to _find _here?" Gaz asked.

"Well, probably Zim. Plus his stupid robot dog. Other than that, hopefully all the people he's kidnapped from all over town." I paused. "You know, this could actually wind up being a good thing, if we can stop him--I mean, he's got the whole town down here, they'll be no _way_ they can deny that he's an alien after being kidnapped by robots and taken to an evil alien base for a week!"

"You really do overestimate people's intelligence," Gaz muttered.

"Euh..." Jack muttered, walking so closely behind me he kept treading on the back of my shoes. "I don't like this...where's all the light in here? Can't see nuthin'...this is all a trap, I'm sure of it, all this is just the government tryin' to get my toenails again--"

"Jack, why exactly do you think the government wants to get your toenails?" I asked, glancing back at the dark space where I could just see his terrified face.

"All sortsa horrible reasons," he said in a low voice, eyes narrowing steelily.

_Thump._

I spun around--the door behind us slammed shut, blocking out the small amount of light from the streetlamps beyond.

"_Aaaiiiggghhh!_" Jack let out a screech, followed by a strangled gasp from me as he grabbed me fearfully around the neck, severely constricting my windpipe. "What was that?"

"Le--gofme!" I said, shaking him off and gasping for air. I turned around, shining my flashlight behind him. "Jack, there's nothing--oh no."

As my light sliced through the air there was a sudden shimmer, a strange reflection as if the light had hit a pool of water or a mirror, though there was nothing apparently there. I froze. Silence for a moment.

Then the space of air shimmered again. And suddenly something very big was filling the hallway behind us.

"AGH! TOENAIL-STEALIN' ALIEN ROBOT THING!" Jack fell to the floor, covering his head and glancing up in horror.

Zim's robot loomed over us, a full eight feet tall, massive, almost filling the whole width of the hallway. Behind it I saw two more shimmer into existence, and more behind that, how many I couldn't tell.

I stumbled back. Jack cowered.

Gaz raised her bat, eyes narrowed into deadly slits. "Showtime," she muttered, staring the robots down.

* * *

I'm curious if anyone got the joke about Jack's uncle...or the Eyeball agents Dib mentions.

So, how did that turn out? Hopefully well--I was specifically trying to expand on Jack's character a little more, since Peggy and Rodger wound up taking up so much of the story. I wanted a bit more interaction between him and Gaz, but this is what I could put in. Did I do a good job there? Please, feedback!

_Now._ It's probably going to be another wait until the next update, but the next chapter is going to be _a big one_ (in terms of importance if not size), and I'll probably be writing the chapter after that along with it so I can put it out really quickly. So, be on the lookout for Chapter 22, because Chapter 23 might show up within, like, a day of it, a few days at most, and these two are the _really_ _important chapters_. The climax of this story approaches! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. Until then, please leave reviews and type to you soon!

(Also, totally random question to Invaderzimfannumber1: Did you get my last PM, or is the system still messing up or something?)


	23. CH 22: The Voice in the Dark

The update is _here!_ And this is a big one. This and the next few chapters are pretty much what I built this entire story idea upon; if executed properly, they should more-or-less blow your freakin' minds. Let's see how well I did, then. :-D

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Two  
The Voice in the Dark

"_Targets acquired. Capturebot Units, engage._"

The lead robot's claw flew out, straight for us--I let out a yelp and jumped back--Jack screamed from his place on the floor as the claw headed straight for him. Gaz swung her bat--

_CRASH!_

The claw flew off and went flying against the wall. The robot brought the tentacle-like arm up and examined it; it seemed a bit stunned. "_Uh...that ain't supposed to happen._"

"Okay. Let's _run _now," Gaz suggested.

She suddenly pushed me, hard, down the hall--in one fluid move she had bent down, grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt collar and threw him the same direction, so he went flying through the air after me, screaming. Then she turned and ran just as the robots came forward to attack.

"_Capturebot Units in pursuit!_"

"_Agh!_" I cried.

I looked ahead the way I was running--more dark tunnel, and then, suddenly, a dead end. Two side tunnels went off in either direction.

I skidded to a stop. "Agh! Which way do we go?!"

"Left," Gaz said simply, pushing me roughly that way. Jack caught up and began to follow--she spun him around and threw him the other way. "No, you go right."

"_Agh!_" He stumbled and ran down the other tunnel; Gaz turned and ran after me.

I gasped for air. "Why'd you do that?!"

She shrugged. "Split the robots up."

I turned around and looked past her; three robots were flying down the hallways after us. Well, her plan had worked, at least. I turned back around but yelled at Gaz, "Where are we running to?"

"_Pffft. _I dunno. Wherever Zim is."

"What?! Why?!"

"Because these robots are tough. Zim's not. We find him, he'll do something stupid and wind up destroying these things for us."

"What?! Gaz, that's..." I paused, turning around again, thinking. "...Actually pretty clever..."

"Well, until we reach a dead end."

"Huh?"

_SLAM!_

I hit the wall, stumbled back and fell. Gaz skidded gracefully to a stop and spun around to face the coming robots, bat raised up high.

"Okay, change of plans."

The leading robot flew forward. Gaz leapt into the air and swung her bat.

_CRASH! CRASH!_

The bat slammed into the robot's eye, snapped around, then slammed down into its purple bubble, shattering it. She landed, standing sideways on the robot's body, brought the bat down one more time and kicked off. The robot flew back and slammed into the wall, crashing to the floor. Another flew forward to grab her--she spun around and stabbed her bat forward, punching a perfect hole directly through its metal body. She swung the bat around and the robot flew to hit the other wall with a blast of flames.

Gaz spun around to face the third robot hovering before her. It shrank back as though nervous. Gaz motioned forward with her hand. "_Bring it._"

The robot let out a whimper, turned and flew back down the hallway.

I sat up, gaping. "_Whoa. _That was coo-_oooooool!"_

"_Agh!_"

The floor beneath us suddenly began to shimmer--then, abruptly, vanished. I let out a scream as I fell, Gaz beside me. Then I hit the floor with a crash.

"_Ow!_"

"Ugh," Gaz said. She had landed calmly on her feet.

Sometimes she could be really, really annoying that way.

I staggered to my feet, looking around. I could see the huge empty space where we had been standing twenty feet above us, a rectangle of slight brightness like an opened trapdoor. Some sort of force field or something? I shook my head. "Now what?"

"_Aaaaaagggggghhhhhh!_"

I jumped. "What was that?"

I turned my head, straining my ears. I could hear the voice coming faintly from somewhere above us.

"_Aaaggghhh! NO! Lemme go! NO!_"

"It's Jack!" I grabbed my fallen jaw, looking up to the trapdoor above us. "They've got him! Jack! JACK!"

"_Aaaggghhh! My toenails! NOT MY TOENAILS!_"

"JACK!"

Silence. I didn't breath. I turned to face Gaz. "They got Jack, Gaz!"

"Yeah, that's the least of our problems."

"Whuddyou mean?"

She pointed into the darkness around us. I looked up and my jaw dropped again.

There were six robots standing in front of Gaz.

I turned and looked around. And saw six robots standing in front of me.

And another six and another six on the other two sides.

"Meep."

The robots went forward.

I let out a scream. Gaz reached into her pocket and took out the holy water Jack had given us, flicking off the cork.

"_Yaahh!_"

She whipped the bottle around, sending a stream of water into two robots' faces--instantly they began to spark and sputter as Gaz leapt forward and swung her bat, sending one crashing into the other and both flying through the air. Four others rushed at her--her bat went flying, smashing, stabbing.

Two robots rushed forward at me. I took out my water gun and holy water bottle two, my only weapons.

"Okay, robots," I said, narrowing my eyes. "You wanna fight! Hee-_yah!_"

I threw the bottle at the nearest robot and blasted the other with my water gun.

The bottle smashed and dribbled down the robot's chest-bubble. The water squirted the other in the eye. The eye blinkered for a moment, then turned back to normal. The two just stared down at me.

I looked down at the puddle of water and nearly-empty water gun. "Crud."

The first robot's claw snapped forward. I let out a cry and jumped.

It didn't work--the robot grabbed me, its metal claws clutching around my chest, pressing my arms helplessly against my side. I let out a scream. "GAZ!"

The robot lifted me. I kicked helplessly. It brought me up right above its bubble.

My eyes went wide. I closed my eyes. "GAZ!"

"_BUSY!_"

The robot threw me, feet-first towards its bubble.

"_Agh!_"

My feet hit the bubble; my shoes slipped almost effortlessly through like it was made of jelly. I waved my arms and kicked wildly.

"_Agh--ow!_"

My chin hit something hard. My head swam. I blinked and looked around, vision blurred. I was high up, but not falling. I looked around wildly. "Huh?"

The robot looked down at me, startled. "_Well, that ain't good,_" it said in its dully mechanical voice.

"Huh?! What the--"

I'm not sure how exactly it had happened. My legs had flown through the bubble; my chest and arms had flown in; my body was encased inside it, trapped inside the small space.

But apparently, as it threw me, I had kicked just right against the metal cavity, or the weird alien-plastic or something, in just such a way so that my head _hadn't_ gone in. And the weird bubble had apparently re-solidified as soon as I was _supposed _to be inside, which meant that, though my body was trapped inside the bubble, kicking and thrashing helplessly, my _head_ was still _outside, _staring out at the scene of Gaz and the robots' fight.

"Oh--_agh!_" I kicked and punched inside the bubble--I felt my hands and feet connect to the metal and hard plastic, but they were entirely solid now. I twisted my head as much as I could--I gasped for air, my windpipe somewhat pinched by this bizarre trap. "GAZ! HELP ME!"

"_BUSY!_" she screamed again, smashing another robot in the head.

The robot she was fighting fell; she fell to the floor, crouching, among a pile of broken and destroyed robotic pieces. She stood and looked around--the robot that had me was the only one left undestroyed.

The robot lurched forward--I let out a cry as my head and body suddenly went swung wildly with the movement, my stabilized neck between them. Gaz raised her bat and glared. I was suddenly caught between two emotions--hope that she could break this thing and set me free, and fear that she could break this thing and most of my bones in the process.

Then she suddenly turned, eyes going wide. "Oh, man..."

I turned my head. My mouth fell open.

_More_ robots were coming out of the darkness.

They walked calmly over the broken bodies of their comrades, surrounding us yet again, even more than there had been the last time. Gaz gazed around at them in amazement. "How many of these things did Zim _make_?"

I looked around frantically from my awkward position--even from my viewpoint I could see at least a dozen surrounding us, which probably meant another dozen or more that I couldn't. "Gaz! Be careful!"

"Don't worry," Gaz said, twirling her bat as if she were preparing to hit a home run. "I have a plan."

"You do?!" I smiled, relieved--of course Gaz would have a plan, she always did, she always had some amazing trick or scheme or skill for these kinds of situations.

"Yeah." Gaz put her bat on the floor, leaning it against her body, then raised her hands halfway into the air. "I surrender."

"_WHAT?!_"

My mouth dropped open; I stared at her in amazement, as she gazed back apathetically. "Surrender?! _Surrender?!_ You can't surrender! You're--you're--_GAZ! Gaz does not work that way!_"

"Euh." She shrugged. I merely gaped.

Suddenly I heard a soft sound, magnified hugely in the empty blackness. I spun around. Something was standing there between two of the robots. Two somethings, one taller, one shorter. Not robots but something my own size.

"Good idea, Gaz. I have more than four hundred Capturebots here tonight--I don't think even _you_ would be able to defeat them all. No offense."

That...voice. I knew that voice. But it wasn't the high-pitched, irritating voice I had been expecting...

I heard a sigh. "Oh, Dib. You just had to come here tonight. I didn't want to do this, you know. I tried to convince you not to." The figure was walking forward, the shorter one beside. "I liked you, you know...I didn't want you to get involved."

I watched the figure, feeling my mouth growing dry. "Who..." I began, but I already knew the answer.

Gaz was looking at the darkness with narrowed eyes. I stared at it in amazment.

It continued. "Ah well. I guess it's better, in the long run...I need to get as many specimens as possible, and my time is short. You and your sister will be a valuable contribution."

I felt the blood drain from my face. I stared, not even blinking. "No..." I muttered. "No, it can't be..."

The smile was the first thing I saw emerge from the darkness. The sly, evil smile on the face I knew more instantly than the voice.

Peggy O'Sullivan walked calmly out from between the two Capturebots, hands behind her back, gazing up at me with a wicked glint in her bright blue eyes. Rodger followed behind her, arms crossed, gazing up at me with characteristic annoyance on his face.

* * *

_**Dun-dun-dun!**_

...But seriously--how many people saw this coming? 'Cause I know I didn't manage to trick you all.

Please leave a review! I could post the next chapter by tomorrow, but I won't until I know enough people have read this one! I'm evil that way. EVIL! (chucks bunny into a volcano) Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! But if you're desperate for more JoeMerl stuff to read, I also have a new one-shot up called "The Screwball Letter" about Jack and his uncle mentioned in the last chapter (whom several of you managed to guess the correct identity of). And I _might_ post something else soon but I'm not sure. So! Do that and look out for the next chapter, and as always, thanks!

P.S.: This story now has _**2,039**_ hits! WHOO!


	24. CH 23: Buh Whuh Huh Whoo DAH? !

Okay! So, I managed to hunt down most of the usual readers, so let's get...

...You know what? I'm bored of this story. I think I'm just gonna quit it. I don't even have an ending or anything, so, like...yeah. It's no good. I think I'll just end it here and leave it at that.

(30 death threats later.)

Okay, you know what? I have ideas now! Heh-heh. So, let's continue! The time for explanations is _now!_

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Three  
Buh--Whuh--Huh--Whoo--DAH?!

"Huh--wha--who?!"

I stared down at the two from five feet above their heads. Rodger glared. Peggy sighed again.

"Well, RODGER, I guess you might as well do away with the disguise now. Get everything out in the open."

Rodger's mouth curled into a sneer as he continued to glare at me. He didn't answer. But then, suddenly, a line cut through his face, running from his forehead down to his chin, his neck, then down his chest, cutting down his shirt and pants too. I let out a strangled gasped as his bifurcated skin and clothes suddenly snapped away, flying behind him and disappearing into a compartment in his back.

I sputtered in amazement. A small silver-white robot was standing where Rodger had been a moment before.

"Buh--whuh--huh--whoo--DAH?! You're an alien!" I screamed, looking at Peggy in horror.

"Well...yeah," Peggy said, with a little shrug and an apologetic smile.

"I called it," Gaz said, raising her hand slightly in the air.

"But--but--but--" I stammered wildly, trying to make sense of this revelation. "This--this doesn't make sense! I saw you eat human good and drink water and stuff! Irkens can't do that!"

"_Ugh,_" Peggy's face twisted into a look of disgust. "Of course not! I'm not an Irken!"

"_You just said you were!_ And you have an evil alien robot!"

"Hey!" RODGER snapped. His voice sounded almost the same as it had when he was in his human disguise, except hollower, more...well, robotic, really.

"_Noooo_. I said I was an _alien._ I'm a _Vosgarian._ Totally different. I'm not some stupid _Irken._" She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "And RODGER here's not a SIR unit like Zim has, though he's based on the same Vortian model. Anyway, it's just Irkens who have that weird aversion to any other kind of food--Vosgarians or Vortians or Plooskians or whatever can eat most alien dishes just fine." She licked her lips. "Actually, human food is some of the best _I've _ever had."

"_Pfft. _Compared to Vosgarian sludgeworms, maybe."

"Shut up, RODGER."

"So--_you're_ the one who's behind all of this? _You're_ the one who's been sending out armies of gigantic robots, kidnapping everyone in town and making my life a living hell for the past week?!"

"Yeah-huh." She nodded vigorously.

"I mean, come on, man, it _was_ pretty obvious," RODGER muttered, making a dismissive motion with one robotic hand.

I gaped at her. This couldn't be true, it just couldn't--I searched my mind wildly for some proof. "But I saw Irken letters when I decoded the robot's programming!"

"No. You saw _Vosgarian_ letters," Peggy said. "I can see why you would make that mistake, though--they do look kind of similar."

"But--no!" But I knew she was right--I had noticed myself that the letters didn't seem to fit perfectly with the ones I had seen from Tak's ship.

All I could do was stare at the two, open-mouthed. Peggy gave me a sympathetic look.

"Aw, Dib, I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to put you through all of this." She walked over to me--or the Capturebot that had me trapped, really. It suddenly lowered itself onto its haunches--I let out a cry as I dropped down, so that Peggy could speak to me at almost eye level. "I really didn't want you to get involved. That's why I had the Capturebots skip over your house, and Jack's, and skip over your neighborhood the night we were staking out. And why I had them take all your stuff earlier today, I was hoping you wouldn't try to come here without it."

"_You _did that?"

She nodded, a bit sadly. "Like I said, I was trying to keep you out of this. For your own good." She sighed. "It's a pity that first bot attacked you, at the skool--that was an accident, by the way, the unit was malfunctioning. RODGER and I had to rush right back here when we figured out what was happening, we called it back to the base. After that I gave all the bots instructions not to attack you. I had hoped you wouldn't find out about the others...that you would just give up after that one incident."

I felt my face harden into a snarl. "Well, I didn't!" I snapped, trying to sound as intimidating as I could when my arms and legs were thrashing helpless inside an alien containment cell. "And you won't get away with this, Peggy! You might have me trapped _now,_ but I won't let you complete whatever sick alien experiments you're doing on people! I _will_ stop you!"

"Oh, you think?" she asked, her voice suddenly cold, eyes hard. "Well, I don't think you're in any position to be making threats, now are you, _Dib?_" She leaned forward, rising onto her toes. "Because I have you trapped, and my plans are almost complete. And you have _no idea_ who you're dealing with."

She leanedso close to me that our noses were almost touching, her eyes burning into mine as I glared back at her. Then suddenly she leaned backwards and began to laugh.

"_Whoo!_ Okay, I'm sorry, just got caught up in the _dra-ma!_" She laughed her girlish laugh, waving her hand at me. Then she suddenly spun around and spoke in a businesslike tone. "RODGER, time-check."

The glowing red eyes faded for a moment. "Earth time: 10:38 PM. Standard Interplanetary Time: 16.439. We have approximately thirty-one hours left to submit our research," he said simply, rattling the information off in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Hmm...okay, good. We're ahead of schedule." She paused, tapping one finger against her cheek, biting her lip. Then she turned around and smiled at us.

"Well, okay. This is actually a good thing, in a way. I mean, I was willing to avoid capturing you, but if I already have anyway...and I know my superiors will be interested in _you, _Dib. You'd make a valuable specimen."

"Interested--specimen--what?" I said, feeling the blood drain from my face.

She spun on her heels and gave two quick claps. "Capturebots, RODGER, back to the main lab!" She turned to Gaz, cocking her head curiously. "You coming?"

"Are you going to try to stick _me _in one of those things?" she asked, jabbing a thumb towards the nearest Capturebot.

Peggy giggled. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Okay, then."

Peggy smiled, then motioned forward as she began to march. RODGER walked beside her--my robot, and the others around us, began to march after them.

"Wh-whoa!" I cried, suddenly feeling my head tossed around as the robot rose again and began to move. Gaz fell into step with it and calmly walked, bat once again held over her shoulder and looking as if she were not at all perturbed by anything about this scene.

We walked through the dark hallway for a moment, surrounded by giant robots, Peggy leading, RODGER grumbled lightly under his breath (...robot-breath), me sputtering wildly under mine, and Gaz looking around as if bored. Finally she asked, "So, is that disguise a hologram or what?"

"What?" Peggy asked, turning back. "Oh, no, this is just a standard Vosgarian exo-mimetic suit. We use them to blend in with other species. Ooh! Wanna see a trick?" She stopped walking and spun around--my robot and the others instantly froze, sending my head and body flying again.

Peggy held up an arm, giggling. She seemed to concentrate for a moment, and suddenly her skin tone began to change--it darkened, from pink to brown to almost black, then faded to palest white before returning to its normal shade. "Neat, huh?"

"Huh." Gaz didn't seem to have any particularly interesting response to that. "Why don't you take it off? Since we already know you're an alien, anyway?"

"Oh, well" she giggled, turning around to march again--I gave another yelp as the robots started up "it's just easier to keep it on. It'd be kind of hard for me to move through these tunnels in my normal form."

"Huh?" It was the first sensible thing I had managed to stammer out in a while, but Gaz interrupted again before Peggy could respond.

"So, how it is _you've_ been the one sending the robots out, if _Zim_ confessed to it?"

"Yeah!" I glared down at her. "This--doesn't even make any sense! How can _you _be the one controlling the robots?! I heard Zim _say_ it was him!"

"No, you didn't," RODGER said. His arms were crossed; it was bizarre, he looked so completely different than he had the whole time I'd known him, yet at the same time, his posture and sarcastic tone were almost perfectly the same.

"Yes I did! Remember?! When we broke into his base, his computer said--"

"His computer said, _'No, he's working on_ something about _robots,'_" RODGER said. I jumped--his voice had suddenly dropped in pitch until it sounded exactly like Zim's computer. "_Not _that he was controlling the robots. And Zim said that he was '_working on the problem with the robots--_'" I jumped again as his voice suddenly changed to Zim's high-pitched semi-shriek "--again, not that he was actually _behind _the robots, just that there was a _problem_ with them."

"He was talking about _our_ Capturebots," Peggy explained. "He knew about them, just like you. And just like you, he was trying to figure out where they had come from."

I gaped. "He--what?! But--no, no, no! He was threatening me! He threatened you!"

"Yes--after he figured out that _I_ was the one sending them out." Peggy tossed a strand of her blue hair back.

"How'd _he _figure it out?" Gaz asked.

RODGER turned to glare up at me. "Well, _Dib_ helped him with that."

"What?! No I didn't!"

"RODGER, hush. But he is right," she added, turning to me. "He figured it out right after we broke into his base. I accidentally left a DNA sample."

"Huh?"

She stopped walking--instantly the Capturebot I was riding froze too, sending me jerking forward once again, and everyone else as well. Peggy turned around to face us, then pulled down the shoulder of her shirt again. The bandage was still there.

"Remember when his robot bee stung me? Well..."

She carefully peeled off the bandage and leaned back so I could get a good look at her injury. I let out a yelp and tried to pull away, an impossible act considering my position.

Under the bandage was a hole that went right through her skin--or her disguise, I realized, because I could see her _real_ skin underneath it--bulging, gray, and slimy, it instantly released a fetid stink into the air that made me want to cough and sputter. The skin seemed to be bulging out of the hole, as if Peggy's disguise were filled to bursting, and she had to poke the gray flesh down before she could even put the bandage back on.

"Apparently I left some small amount of blood, or maybe even just a few skin cells, in Zim's base when the bee stung me. He must have detected the Vosgarian DNA and figured out what I was." She covered her shoulder back up and began to walk again--the robot sputtered to life again, resuming the march. "That's when he realized _I_ was behind the robot attacks. That's why he threatened me."

I was too stunned to speak for a moment. I swallowed. "But, what about me?"

"Well, I can't be _sure,_" Peggy said slowly, thoughtful again, "but I _think_ he thought you were helping me, or something. He knew we were close, and I suppose he just assumed you knew who I really was."

"What?! Why would I help you with this--this--whatever this is?!"

"Well, _he _couldn't figure it out either. He just thought that I came to interfere with his mission, or something, and you were helping. Not that that's true--I had no idea there was an Irken Invader stationed on Earth. Which incidentally is _not_ cool--this is _our_ territory, I intend to have Sludgelady Ixildana contact the Tallest about just that issue, by the way."

"So--" I still couldn't believe this, it couldn't be true! "So everything you told me was a lie?! All that stuff about--everything?! The huge long story about where you were from and all that stuff was fake?!"

"Yeah," Peggy said brightly. "I did a good job on all that, didn't I?"

"Ugh!" I dropped my head, letting it rest on the cool plastic surface. Then I looked up. "But what about all that stuff with your parents--or fake parents?" My voice suddenly turned from disbelieving to bitter. "That was just a total coincidence, wasn't it? That you had the same last name?"

"Actually, no," RODGER said, turning to look at me from the corners of his glowing red eyes. "_That_ part was...somewhat true."

"Huh?"

"It's true that the O'Sullivans were captured," Peggy explained, turning to look at me as well. "The only difference is, _we_ were doing the capturing."

Gaz raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

Peggy sighed. "Well, it's a _long_ story..."

* * *

Before you say anything, I said that Peggy wasn't an _Irken,_ never that she wasn't an _alien._ And from the very beginning, I had planned her to be from a different species, so I never lied. And I never responded at all to the theory that RODGER was a robot.

Seriously. Go back and check on any of this evidence. I've written everything _very_ carefully. And tell me if I've left any other holes to explain, because I might have missed something...

Okay, well, this chapter was supposed to be longer, but I think I'm gonna break it up into two. More Peggy/Rodger explanation soon! And then a chapter with a bit more action, and a few more charatcers. ;-) Please leave reviews, and check out "The Screwball Letter" if you haven't already...and be on the lookout, because I might post some one-shot(s) or something sometime soon. I'm not sure. Anyway, next chapter soon (hopefully)! Hope you enjoyed!


	25. CH 24: Missing People

Flashbacks in this chapter! I hope you enjoy. :-D

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Four  
Missing People

"I just arrived on Earth about--well, I guess it would be a week ago tonight. I was _supposed_ to be here _months_ ago. But there were some problems..."

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_Pgnaskani stared out the window of her ship, across the bland, dusty wasteland, over to the planet rising magnificently over the horizon._

_It was a beautiful world, Pgnaskani thought--nothing like Vosgaria, but equally beautiful in its own unique way. It glowed out at her from across the sublunary void, so tantalizingly close yet so far away. A mere few hundred thousand miles between her and her destination! She had traveled hundreds of light-years to get here, and now, after all these months, here she was, stranded on a dead, deserted moon, looking desperately at the planet that was, in relative terms, a mere inch away from her grasp!_

_"Ugh! RODGER, get over here!"_

_"Yes, master?" the robot said, quickly appearing in front of her with a respectful salute. _

_"We've been stranded on this horrible moon for months now. We need a way off of it." She turned, raising her curled antennae into the air, her buglike eyes gleaming in the light reflected from the planet beyond. "We need to--"_

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"Wait a second," Gaz interrupted. "I thought you said you weren't an Irken."

"Yeah!"

"Hey! Who's telling this story, here? Huh? Is it you two? Now be quiet and I'll get to that!"

"But why were you even on the moon to begin with?"

"Buh-buh-buh! Getting there!"

Peggy took a deep breath and resumed her story.

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_...her buglike eyes gleaming in the light reflected from the planet beyond. "We need to find someone capable of repairing the ship. You've tried absolutely everything you can think of?"_

_RODGER looked sullen. "Yes. Until the ship's connections to the Vortinet are working again, I can't access any more information that could help us repair it." He was sounding increasingly bitter about that fact. _

_Peggy sighed. "Well, then. I guess we have no choice." She turned, looking back out at the planet beyond. "Prepare the Capturebot."_

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"You were there to capture somebody...on the moon?"

"No. I sent the Capturebot into space, _from _the moon to the Earth, to capture a human scientist. The bots can fly through space, so a short jot of a few hundred thousand miles was no biggy. I'm no engineer, and I needed someone specialized in advanced spaceship designs and physics. I figured the very best of human technology might be enough to make at least basic repairs to a Vosgarian vessel."

"So you captured this O'Sullivan guy?" Gaz asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yup."

There was a pause. Gaz and I looked at each other. Finally I spoke. "Um...just out of curiosity--"

"Yeah, he was our first choice. But your dad is well-known and has a popular TV show, not to mention you two would have noticed his absence. Pat's more low-key and doesn't have any kids." She shrugged.

"Actually, _we _probably wouldn't have noticed if you'd taken Dad. But go on."

"Okay, see..."

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_"My--help? I don't--I don't understand..."_

_He followed Pgnaskani through the ship's corridor, watching her with a kind of fearful curiosity. He seemed utterly fascinated and yet terrified of her. _

_Pgnaskani took a brief look down at herself. She wished she could have created a human suit already, but until she got to Earth she wouldn't be able to gather enough information to come up with a good, convincing disguise. She was still in the Irken suit she had been wearing for months now--she had only taken it off once or twice, with all the damage to the ship it just made it easier to move around. Still, she felt a renewed sense of bitterness about it--if it hadn't been for that insane Irken chick, she wouldn't have been crashed on this horrible dirt-ball in the first place. _

_Dr. O'Sullivan heard his alien captor mutter something like "Stupitack."_

_"Pardon?"_

_She sighed. "Never mind..."_

_She pressed the button next to a door. It _whooshed _opened. Dr. O'Sullivan's eyes widened._

_The room was full of computers, but they were all smashed, crashed and broken. Pieces of metal and glass littered the floor; wires hung everywhere, and every few seconds, a sudden blast of electricity would crackle through the air. The alien known as Pgnaskani turned to give him a severe look._

_"As you can see, my ship's systems are broken. I need you to fix them for me."_

_"Fix them?" The doctor turned white. "But I--"_

_"You have one week." The doctor's eyes widened. Then Pgnaskani turned and walked out of the room, the door whooshing shut behind her as Dr. O'Sullivan looked at the mess before him, a horrified look on his face._

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_"So, how goes it, Doctor?"_

_Obviously not well. He was sitting on the floor, amid the tangled wires and tools, looking utterly flabbergasted. He seemed to have actually managed to put a few simple pieces back together, but he was clearly loss as to what he was doing. He looked up at Pgnaskani and her robot fearfully._

_"Please...I don't know how to do any of this. I'm an expert at physics, but all these computer pieces...these systems I have to repair before I can even get to that, I have no idea."_

_Pgnaskani frowned. She should have known it wouldn't be this easy. "Do you know of someone who can?"_

_Dr. O'Sullivan face turned pale again. "Well...there's my wife..."_

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"So then you captured Mrs. O'Sullivan too?" Gaz asked, completely nonchalant.

"Yeah," Peggy said, just as insouciantly.

"And they managed to fix your ship?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" Peggy said, with a smile. "But of course there were _still _problems..."

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_"Finally!" Peggy cried, grinning, as the ship flew down through the Earth's atmosphere and sped above the human towns below. "Now we can finally proceed with our mission."_

_"Yeah, but we have a problem," RODGER said, arms crossed. "We still only have_ ten days_ before we have to file the report. There's no way we can get a sufficient specimen collection that quickly."_

_Pgnaskani bit her lip. She had purposely been pushing _that_ little problem to the back of her mind; there had been no way of dealing with it until the ship was repaired, after all. Now, though, she had to come up with some kind of plan._

_She was quiet for a long time. After a moment she pressed a few buttons on the control panel in front of her. "We can do it," she said slowly. "But we'll have to work fast. The first thing we need is more Capturebots. With the right resources and equipment, we can manufacture a good number of them in just a couple of days." The computer in front of her beeped; a picture appeared on a screen. "Hmm...an abandoned human factory..."_

_RODGER looked skeptical. "Need I remind you we also need first-hand interaction to report? Cultural analysis and all that?"_

_Pgnaskani gave a wry smile. "Well, you start watching that--'teebee' thing, then. I'll make us some disguises and find us some first-hand interaction."_

_And it was during the second half-hour of RODGER watching _The Scary Monkey Show _that Pgnaskani learned of a place called the "skool"..._

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RODGER shuddered. "I _hate_ that show. That...monkey..." He shuddered again.

"I thought it was kinda cool..."

"Okay, wait, wait, wait," I said, shaking my head. "That still doesn't explain what happened to the O'Sullivans."

"Oh, well, they fixed my ship, of course," Peggy said offhandedly, "and they gave me a bit more useful information...and then I didn't need them anymore. So then I just took their last name for my human alias and got rid of them."

"Got...rid of?"

"Yeah. Once they got my ship up and running and the teleporters start working again, I sent them back to my home planet." She turned her head slightly, eyes glittering maliciously. "For _research_."

She laughed. I felt the blood drain from my face despite how rapidly my heart was pounding in my chest.

Suddenly Peggy cried, "We're here!"

I looked up, startled. We had reached a large pair of thick metal doors. Peggy flashed a hand at a security pad beside it; there was a series of computerized noises before the doors noisily opened.

"Welcome, Dib, Gaz, to my lab."

I felt the breath leave my throat. My eyes went wide.

It was a massive room, several stories tall--I reminded myself that we were in the basement level of the factory, but this one room seemed to stretch up all the way to the top floor. But it wasn't a vast, empty chamber--it was filled with machines.

And people.

I had seen machines like them before in Zim's lab--large, cylindrical tanks that held Zim's various experiments, usually Earth animals or weird hyrbid creatures he had experimented to create. These were a little different. Where Zim's were filled with a kind of eerie, sickly green liquid, these seemed to be filled with nothing but blue-white light that gave the whole lab an oddly pleasant glow. But inside each of these tanks was a person--a tank for every single person Peggy and RODGER had kidnapped.

"Whoa..."

"_Huh_," Gaz said. One eye had actually fully opened, a sign that despite her low-key reaction, even she was impressed by the sight.

I looked up; all around the walls were kinds of tiers, rickety-looking levels that left an empty place in the center of the room to see the ceiling. And each little level was covered with more tanks, with more people inside. There were hundreds of them! Thousands! Every single person in town!

"I know--we really did manage to do a good job, didn't we?" Peggy asked, stopping to admire the room. "And in only five days, too! We have everybody--well, with a few exceptions. People like your dad, you know, people out of town. And people in hospitals, things like that. Also that creepy teacher of yours, I didn't...I didn't want to send a Capturebot after her. Couldn't even find an address...oh, hey Keef!" she called, waving.

I jumped--or jumped as much as I could, still trapped by a Capturebot--and spun around, jaw dropping to the plastic bubble. As the bot marched behind Peggy into the room, I caught a glance at the tanks nearest to the doors. There, the second one on the right, was Keef. He was floating in the middle of the tank, head drooped on one shoulder, apparently sleeping. Like many of the people I could see, he was for sleep, a plain white T-shirt over pajama bottoms, barefooted, obviously taken in the middle of the night. To his left I could see a man and woman I recognized as his parents. To his right, immediately beside the door, was a younger sleeping boy, with blue hair but a certain strange resemblance to Keef. His younger brother or something?

We marched past them to thecenter of the room. A metal table was built into the floor there, gleaming in a somehow evil sort of way. As the robot approached, I saw that there were metal cuffs placed roughly where the arms and legs would be for someone laying down on it. Right in front of the table was what looked horribly like some kind of massive ray gun, its turret pointed right down at the table. A little way behind that was some kind of computer station.

I was so busy taking in the room in all its terrifying detail that I failed to realize what was about to happen. Peggy clapped again. "Capturebot, put Dib down to be examined."

"Exam--_what?_"

In a flash the robot's cold pincer had grabbed my head. "Agh--stop that! That hurts!"

Instantly the hard plastic (or whatever) around my neck went limp--in one swift movement the robot had pulled me up by the temples, releasing my arms and legs from inside their little cell to kick feebly in the air. "HEY!"

The robot flicked its tentacle-arm and I went flying to the table. Suddenly half a dozen _more _robotic tentacle-arms flew up from beneath the table and grabbed me in the air, one around each of my wrists and ankles, another around my chest, another by the hair. "HEY! NO! LET ME GO--"

I struggled all I could, but to no avail. In a second it was done--I was forced down onto the table, my arms and legs placed in the manacles, which swiftly snapped shut, trapping me. The robotic arms vanished again, leaving me struggling on the cold table against the steel cuffs holding me in place.

I felt something brush my hair. I looked up to see Gaz's upside-down face looking down at me. "Please tell me you have a plan to get me out of this," I whimpered.

She shrugged. "Euh. I'm kinda playing it by ear."

"Great."

Peggy and RODGER were standing behind the control panel now. Two blue eyes shone savagely, two red ones with triumph. Peggy's small hand reached for a lever.

"Well, time to begin the testing," she said, giggling as she flashed her happiest and most wicked smile. She pulled the lever, and the machine looming over me began to glow and rumble to life.

"This isn't gonna be good," I muttered, closing my eyes tightly and turning my head in fear.

* * *

Oh no! Can anything save Dib? Or any_one? _Find out, next chapter on..."DIB IN THE PITS!"

...Okay, that was stupid. Anyway, if anyone is interested, the newest chapter of my _Inheritance Cycle_ short-story humor collection, "32 Short Tales About Alagaesia," is an _Invader Zim_ crossover. So, if you're familiar with those books or just interested in random silly GIR humor, feel free to pop on over there.

So, I will update soon (hopefully! Stupid school work), and please leave your oh-so-appreciated reviews!


	26. CH 25: Crushed

We're coming to the close here, people! Only this chapter, then two more and an epilogue, followed by any "bonus material" I can think to add. Bittersweet as that is, I'm trying to finish this up soon, since I have so many other projects I need to/want to start working on. Anyway, this chapter should be kind of fun, so I hope you enjoy. :-D

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Five  
Crush(ed)

"_Euuugh..._"

I felt my whole body tremble as I waited for the blast. I suddenly wished I were pinned to Zim's operating table instead--at least that was a position I had been in before. What was the worst Zim had ever done to me? Threaten to take out my organs? No big deal. Slowed me down with that weird time thing? Painful but not too bad. Trapping my mind in that virtual reality machine for what had felt like decades? Heck, _that_ was one of the best times I'd ever had in my life.

I heard the huge machine in front of me begin to charge up. "Okay, Dib," came Peggy's sinisterly chipper voice, "just stay still there for a minute, while I--"

_CRASH!_

"Whah--"

I jumped and spun around as best I could, finally finding the source of the noise behind me--a huge robotic battle-mech had just burst through the wall, sending a piece of machinery flying across the room. The robot was not quite as big as one of Peggy's Capturebots, but almost, a pair of huge robotic legs supporting an open area where the driver sat, with what looked like a pair of huge boom box speakers on the top. Zim sat in the middle of this machine, glaring out at Peggy. His stupid little robot was clinging to the mech's leg with one hand while he carried a very confused-looking pig under the other.

"ZIM!"

"Yes, it is I, _Peggy!_" Zim cried, his face twisted into a furious grin. "I have come to put a stop to you and the Dib-monkey's filthy little plan!"

"And then we gonna go for ice cream!"

"_NO, GIR! _You chose milkshakes as this week's treat! If you want ice cream you're going to have to wait 'til Thursday!"

"WAAAH!"

"_Stop it!_ Don't make me cancel Wednesday Pizza Night!"

He gasped. "You wouldn't dare!"

"Don't test me!"

"WAAAHHH!"

"Oy," RODGER muttered, dropping his face into one robotic hand with a look of profound shame.

"Get out of here, Zim!" Peggy yelled, face hardening. "This has nothing to do with you!"

"Ha! You and the Dib-weasel come together to plot my downfall, and it has nothing to do with me?!"

"I'm manacled to a table!" I cried a little shrilly, kicking feebly at the cuffs on my leg.

"Hyeh?" Zim seemed to notice me for the first time, confused. Then he scoffed. "Oh. Trying the old 'manacle-the-hyuman-to-the-table' trick on me, eh? Well, I won't fall for it!"

"Er--Capturebots, attack!"

Peggy jabbed a finger at Zim. Immediately all the Capturebots in the room spun around and made for Zim and his robot.

Zim grinned his horrible grin. I had seen it a hundred times before, but for probably the first time ever, I was actually _glad _to see it.

"Oh yeah, Peggy? Well, how about _this!_"

He pulled a lever. Instantly a huge, piercing sound filled the air; I screwed up my face, wishing I could cover my ears as the air itself seemed to shimmer and shake and glow--the speaker-like devices on top of Zim's mech seemed to be blasting the air with light and noise, and the Capturebots were falling back, sparking and sputtering.

"Ah-ha! The greatest in Irken magnetic-wave technology!" Zim cried over the noise, his mech spinning around to blast a Capturebot that had been sneaking up from behind. "Weren't expecting _that, _now were you?! _WERE YOU?! _No you weren't! Mwa-ha!"

"Stop it, stop it! You're going to ruin everything!" Peggy cried.

"That's the point! _DUH!"_

Rolling his eyes, Zim's swung one of his robot's arms around to smash into a damaged Capturebot--it went flying through the air and crashed into a collection of the tubes that lined the walls. The fronts cracked slightly. Peggy rushed out from behind her control station, followed by RODGER.

"_Agh! Stop it, you maniac!_ You could put those people in a coma if you're not careful!"

I looked up at Gaz. "Gaz! Now's your chance! While they're distracted fighting each other, do_--where did you get that soda?!"_

"Vending machine." She took a sip and pointed off towards the wall--sure enough, there was a Poop Cola machine nestled between a collection of tubes with various skool teachers. "Now be quiet, I wanna watch this."

"Agh! _Don't touch that!_"

SMASH!

"You idiot!" RODGER roared.

Peggy's Capturebots were completely useless against Zim--any that came close got blasted by his mech's weird weapon. Peggy ran behind in its wake, unable to really do anything but squeal and moan as Zim smashed and crashed against every piece of machinery he could find. RODGER, meanwhile, was looking enraged.

_"STOP IT!"_

He leapt--Zim turned and leveled his weapon at RODGER. Though it didn't seem to affect him as it did the Capturebot, Zim simply spun his bot around and hit RODGER with one huge robotic arm--RODGER let out a cry and went flying out of my line of view, crashing, from the sound of it, against another captured human's tube.

"HEY! _OH NO YOU DON'T!_"

Peggy went running now--Zim spun around and laughed, and I had to agree with him, because what exactly was she going to do? Zim's robot arm spun around again, and Peggy went flying--she slid across the polished metal floor with a grunt--

"Hee-hee!" Zim's stupid robot slave called wildly.

I looked up at my sister. "Gaz, come on! You gotta help them!"

"'Them' who?"

"...Okay, that's a good point."

Peggy climbed to her feet. She was shaking with rage.

"Stop it NOW!"

"Or what?" Zim taunted, turning his robot yet again with triumph in his blood-red eyes.

"Or--or--urrrgh-_AAAGGGHHH_!"

An inarticulate roar came from her throat--and then, suddenly, her disguise began to rip.

Zim's face fell. "Uh-oh..."

It started just like RODGER, a tear in the forehead, running down her face, neck and chest, skin flying back suddenly to reveal what was underneath. Except it wasn't silver-white metal this time--instead, her body seemed to suddenly explode with massive gray flesh, gigantic lumps of it, expanding in seconds like a massive balloon--

"Ugh--GUH?!" I cried, head risen as best as possible, eyes going wide.

Zim's expression was about the same--his beetle eyes were huge, his mouth open, bizarre segmented tongue fully visible among his weird alien teeth.

How Peggy fit herself inside that tiny human girl suit, not even as tall as me, I will never know. All I know is that she was growing, expanding, to massive size in seconds, five, ten, fifteen feet long, almost twenty, huge amounts of stinking and slimy gray segmented skin, letting out a roar of rage--

"_Whoa._" Gaz said, eyes fully open.

"RAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!"

It was like some sort of huge, segmented slug or worm, at least fifteen feet long and almost as tall in its bloated middle, while the head and tail wiggled and cracked in the air, suspended by its massive center. It had no eyes that I could see--its head was nothing more than a set of snapping jaws filled with six-inch-long fangs and tusks. Its tail ended in what looked like some kind of a sucker oozing with green slime. Two short clawed hands thrashed wildly at its sides, as the mouth opened and roared, fangs flashing in the light.

"AAAGGGHHH!"

Zim let out a cry and pulled a lever--the mech spun around and began to run away, back for the hole it had come through. Monster-Peggy was too fast for it, though.

"RAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!"

Like she had said, she couldn't seem to move very well--she was too simply too huge and bloated to get around. But she swung in a circle, her tail thrashing, and suddenly it shot out a blast of green sludge that shot forward like a cork from a bottle and slammed into Zim's robot, sending it crashing into the wall.

"AAAGGGHHH!"

Zim had jumped out just in time, rolling across the floor as his machine exploded behind him. Peggy let out another roar and came at him, sliding across the tiled floor as best she could, using her stubby arms to launch herself. Zim's red eyes went wide and he ran, screaming.

I watched all this from my position, still manacled to the operation table. I have to admit, I found the whole scene a bit unsettling.

"AAAGGGHHH! AAAGGGHHH AAAGGGHHH AAAGGGHHH AAAGGGHHH _AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH_!"

Gaz's hand suddenly clasped down over my mouth. "_Shhh_. I'm trying to _watch _this." Her eyes were wide open, and she turned, following as Zim ran past with Peggy in hot pursuit. I hadn't seen her so happy since the first time she ever won her piggy-vampire-whatever game.

I continued to scream beneath her hand, struggling wildly with the locks on my arms and legs.

"_Don't worry, Mastah! I help you wit'--WHEEEEEEEE!_"

Peggy let out another roar as Zim's little robot went flying across the room, screaming with glee, over to the rows of tubes. RODGER suddenly appeared out of nowhere and pressed a button on an empty tube--it slid open. Whether Peggy had been aiming for it or not, Zim's robot flew inside, and RODGER pressed a button to shut it again. The robot began to giggle insanely as it flew around through the blue light as though weightless, its voice silenced by the glass.

"AAAGGGHHH! Stop it! Stop it! I AM ZIM!"

"RAAAGGGHHH!"

Zim kept running in and out of my sight, as the monstrous blob that was Peggy followed behind, roaring its displeasure. Suddenly more Capturebots appeared, blocking his path--without his battle droid to help him Zim froze, spun around to face Peggy, eyes wide with horror--

"AAAGGGHHH!"

Peggy swiped at Zim with her claws, sending him flying up into the air--then she spun around again and smacked him, hard, with her tail. He went flying across the room, right towards the same tube where his robot was trapped. RODGER pressed the button again--Zim flew in, smashing with his robot into the back of the tube, and crumbled to the ground. A moment later his unconscious body lifted up, floating in his glowing tubey prison. The robot--indefatiguable as always--continued to float around and began to play with his unconscious master's antennae and eyelids, poking him and giggling in silent insanity.

I watched, transfixed with horror, as the Peggy-monster reared back, opened its massive jaws and let out a roar of triumph, arms waving wildly and more sludge shooting out of its tail.

Gaz's face reappeared in my line of sight. Her eyes were open, glittering wickedly, and she voice was closer to laughter than I had ever heard it before. "And _you_ had a _**crush **_on her."

I whimpered. It was the only thing I could think to say.

* * *

I _told_ you the Dib/OC romance was heading somewhere funny. ;-)


	27. CH 26: Draw

Okay, SORRY this has been so long in coming (especially for you, IZFan1, know you've been looking forward to this), but this fic is now my top FFnet priority. And this is the penultimate chapter! Unless you count the epilogue, in which case this is the antepenultimate chapter. I know some big words, don't I?

But an important announcement! This story now has more than _**100 reviews! **_(Applause.) It's all thanks to you guys, my readers! And as my special guest here tonight, I have **Squiggles Candi,** the reader who submitted this story's _100th review!_

**Squiggles Candi:** Whoo, yay! Do I win a prize or something?

Yes! As a matter of fact, as your prize, you get---_to have a huge battle to the death with Peggy in her real form!_

**Squiggles Candi:** Whoo, yeah! Yay, I---wait, _what?!_

Hee-hee! (Pushes **Squiggles Candi **through a trapdoor; she falls and lands on the floor of a dark room.)

**Squiggles Candi:** Huh...what?

**Vosgarian-Form Peggy: **RAAAGGGHHH!

**Squiggles Candi:** Oh, shit.

Anyway, hope you enjoy, and please leave even more reviews! :-D

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Six  
Draw

"Buh--ziwuh--nuh--goo--"

I continued whimpering incoherently as Peggy, somehow, inexplicably, began to shrink, folding up her bloated flesh as her disguise seemed to grow out of her back, stretched tight over her massive body as she slowly resumed normal size. A few moments later she was a normal-sized, if still slightly misshapen human girl, before her massive body finished shifting beneath her suit and she looked entirely normal once again.

"Buh--nuh--hoo--"

"Oh, calm down, Dib. Like _you _look all that great without your fancy coat and all," Peggy muttered, straightening some creases in her brightly-colored outfit. She sighed, looking around at the smashed-up chamber. "Oh, look at this place...but at least nothing major seems to have been damaged. RODGER, are all the tanks still working?"

"A few are damaged but all are operational, Master."

"Good." She turned to the tube where Zim floated unconscious; his stupid little robot seemed to be trying to rip his antennae off, grunting and giggling with delight. Peggy's nose wrinkled in a look of distaste. "_Ugh._ Why do Irkens keep trying to mess everything up for me?! Well, whatever." She waved dismissively, then smiled over at me, giggling. "Well, at least I took care of Zim for you, eh?!"

"Oh, _great,_" I said, trying to sound harsh but unable to keep my voice from shaking. "Just great! So instead of one evil alien trying to take over the world, I just get _another_ evil alien trying to take over the world instead! Perfect!"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

I sat up as much as possible, glaring at her. "I mean I'm not exactly fond of you abducting the entire town!"

"Well, _excuse_ me--"

"Excuse you?! No! No, I won't excuse you, you--you---inexcusable thing!"

"Wow. Great comeback," Gaz muttered, rolling her eyes.

"_Be quiet, you!_ _I'm_ the one tied to a table about to have my organs ripped out!" I raged, struggling once again against my manacled limbs. "Huh?! Huh?!"

Peggy raised an eyebrow. "Who's ripping out organs?"

"YOU ARE!" I screamed. Pause. "Aren't you?"

"No!"

"Well, whatever! You go around kidnapping half the town and experimenting with people as part of some kind of evil alien plot to take over the world, and you expect me to feel grateful because you managed to take out the stupid, incompetent alien who keeps _failing _to do the exact same thing?!"

"Whoa-whoa-whoa, back up, Buster," Peggy said, wrinkling her nose again. "I'm not trying to take over the Earth!"

I blinked. "You're--you're not?"

"No! What exactly do you _think_ my mission here is?"

"I don't know!" I screamed, realizing for the first time that it was true. "World domination?! Turning the entire city into weird---human-alien-demon-pig hybrids?! Kidnapping us to make us slaves in your horrible alien slug-mines?! Putting us in some kind of intergalactic zoo?! Making us into pizza?! _HUH?!"_

RODGER raised an eyebrow and turned to Peggy. She was shaking her head, looking at me in amazement. "No! What do you think I am, some kind of-- of _Irken_ or something?" She suddenly laughed her silly little laugh. "What do you think, I'm part of some--evil Vosgarian conspiracy to do horrible, evil things to all of humanity?!"

"Um...yeah?"

"No!"

"Well, then, what ARE you doing?!"

"I'm a xeno-anthropology college student! I'm working on my _thesis!_"

My jaw dropped. "...What?!"

"Yeah!" She rolled her eyes. "I'm just here to study humans, not _enslave_ them. I mean," she giggled "if I wanted to do _that_ I wouldn't need all _this,_ would I?" She waved her hands to indicate the lab with its thousands of prisoners. "If I wanted to take over the Earth or something I wouldn't go to _all this_ _trouble_,now would I? I'd just blow it up from orbit or something."

"So wait," Gaz interrupted, raising one eyebrow. "You kidnapped everybody in the entire town because..."

"I needed a large sample of humanity to gather information on," she said with a shrug. "If I wanted to, like, do weird freaky experiments on humanity, I would only need a few humans, wouldn't I? But I needed more for a proper survey of your species."

"But--but you're kidnapping people!" I cried, staring at her in disbelief. "Trapping them in those tubes and doing--what to them, exactly?"

"Just gathering basic information. Doing some quick scans, collecting general data. Oh, which reminds me..."

She went back behind the control panel and pressed a button. Instantly the trigger of the giant ray gun began to glow and hum again. My eyes went wide. "Wait---no, I---"

_TSEEW!_

A sparkling green spotlight shot from the ray gun's end and hit me. Suddenly I could see my own bones glowing through my translucent skin and clothes.

"Agh! Agh, it---it---" I blinked. "...Tingles slightly? Er---kinda itchy---" I squirmed slightly, my arms and legs rubbing against the metal table.

The light vanished. Peggy cocked her head to one side. "There! All done!" she said brightly, giving a huge grin. She turned to an unseen computer screen, fiddling with a few buttons. "_Wow_...your brain is big."

"_MY BRAIN'S NOT BIG! _Er...I mean thank you. Is that...all?"

"Uh, yeah, that should be enough to work with," Peggy said, glancing up briefly from whatever data she had there. "Basic genetic code, X-rays---yeah, I got everything. Let me just let you go..."

She pressed a button. Instantly there was a loud _CLANK!_ as I felt the manacles around my arms and legs snap open. I sat up, rubbing my wrists. I sat over the edge of the table, suddenly feeling like an overemotional kid about to get a lollipop after his checkup.

"Uh---whuh---but what about them?!" I asked, motioning around to the thousands of people trapped in the tubes around me.

"Oh, I'm done with them," Peggy said, giving a dismissive wave while keeping her eyes on the computer. "I already have all the data I need now...just gotta slap it all together into a report. It won't be perfect, but I can do a passable job...I'm aiming for a B-," she said thoughtfully, looking up for a moment and giving a slight nod. "I think that's reasonable, right? Anyway, now that I'm done with everybody, I'm gonna start sending them all home tonight. Modify their memories, that sort of thing."

"Uh---" I was at a loss for words. Then something hit me. "But what about the O'Sullivans?!"

"What about them?"

"You sent them to your home planet to be experimented on!"

"Huh?" She looked confused. Then comprehension dawned on her face. "Oh---_no,_ you got it all wrong!" She chuckled. "I said I sent them to Vosgaria _for research. _You see---"

------------------------------------------------------

_"Thank you for all your help fixing my ship," Pgnaskani said, shaking the two Doctor O'Sullivans' hands in turn. "And I'll keep that name you suggested in mind."_

_"Oh, no trouble," Debra said. "It was worth all the horrible abduction in the middle of the night to be able to meet a real live alien!"_

_"Yeah," Pat chuckled. "I can't wait to tell Membrane. He's never gonna believe this!"_

_"It must be so interesting, getting to go to all different planets and do studies and things," Debra added. "Sounds like a dream job to me."_

_"Hmm. Really?" Pgnaskani's eyes fell on the teleporter in the corner._

------------------------------------------------------

"And so they decided to go to Vosgaria as a kind of 'exchange program.' Ooh, I got a transmission from them yesterday, in fact, they're doing _great. _Once my family figured out they weren't edible they got along like schklinkzers and morqunans."

"So, they're...not getting their brains dissected?"

"Not that I know of."

"Huh."

I sat there for a moment, taking all this in. Then Gaz spoke for the first time in a while. "So, what are ya gonna do with _them_?" She pointed to the tank where Zim and his robot were kept; the latter was now trying to force Zim's eyelid open, and despite the violent jerkings Zim seemed unable to respond.

Peggy scowled. "I'm not sure..._he's_ been a real nuisance."

"Second time he's tried to break into our base today," RODGER muttered. I began to ask what he meant, then suddenly remembered how beaten up Zim had looked that morning in class.

A sudden thought occurred. "_Hey..._if you're a good alien, and you have him captured---" I turned to Zim's tank, an ecstatic grin spreading across my face, "that means you can just keep him in there, can't you?! Or---send him to intergalactic jail or something?! Keep him from being able to take over the Earth?!" I jumped off the table, feeling adrenaline racing through my veins.

Peggy coughed awkwardly. "Um...actually, no. I have to release him."

"You---_what?_"

"Oh, don't give me that look!" Peggy said, frowning at me. She sounded annoyed. "I don't really have a choice. It's part of that stupid peace treaty we signed with them...we're not supposed to do anything to interfere with any Irken military operations that don't directly affect us or our allies. I don't know _why_ the Sludgelady agreed to sign that, and it's not like the Tallest are living up to their end...I mean, Zim _must _have passed through Vosgarian space to get here, Earth is clearly under our sphere of influence---oh, and did you _hear_ what they did to Vort?! Did you?! _Ugh!_" She grimaced, taking a moment to rein her temper in.

"But---you mean, you can't just---" I fidgeted with my hands, motioning to Zim's paralyzed body. "_Do_ something with him?"

"Well, I can report him to my higher-ups," Peggy muttered. "He's just one more violation of intergalactic law to bring up next time the Sludgelady and the Tallests meet. But for now...no. I'll leave him locked up so he can't interfere with my project, but I'll have to send him home along with everybody else." She looked rather annoyed at the thought.

"Lame," I muttered, feeling my shoulders droop.

------------------------------------------------------

I argued with Peggy and RODGER for a few more minutes about Zim, but soon RODGER pointedly reminded Peggy about their limited time before her project was due. After a hasty apology they showed us out of the factory.

"Well, that was stupid," Gaz grumbled as we picked up our bikes and began to walk the lonely streets home.

"Yeah," I agreed. I looked up. "But we did it. Thanks to us, the world is once again safe from alien annihilation!"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, turning to me and raising one eyeball wide. "The world was never _in_ any danger from Peggy, and _Zim _will be back to trying to destroy it by Monday."

"...Okay, yeah," I agreed, shrugging slightly. "...But we came out fine and Zim got beat up, so I'm still counting this as a win!"

She turned to look straight ahead again. "Your girlfriend is a giant alien slug."

I opened my mouth to retort, closed it, then glared down at my handlebars. "Fine. We'll call it a draw," I grumbled, casting her an angry glare.

* * *

Last chapter will be up---soon! Until then!


	28. CH 27: Clip

Hey everyone! Didn't get many reviews last chapter...I mean, I know I took a little break, but did all my fans forget me? :'( Anyway, enough overuse of smileys. Last "official" chapter, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Seven  
Clip

On Monday morning, there was only one subject that everybody in skool was talking about.

"You and your family were at the _Citytown Annual Chili Cookoff_?"

"Yeah," Gretchen said, frowning, looking slightly confused. "It was kind of weird...nobody in my family really likes chili that much, but we all just decided to go. And everybody else was going..."

I gaped at her in amazement. She, at least, seemed to realized how ridiculous that explanation for her nearly-week-long absence was---everybody else seemed to be taking the explanation just fine, talking to their friends and exchanging stories and recipes that they had, supposedly, acquired while actually locked up in Peggy's secret factory lab.

"But---" I shook my head. "Don't you remember---anything---_else?!_ Anything---scary and robotic, or something?!"

She blinked. "Huh?"

"Hey guys!"

I turned; Keef ran up to us, grinning as widely as always, carrying a covered plastic bowl in his hands.

"Hey Gretchen! I got a _great _chili recipe at the Cookoff. Come try it!"

"Well, I don't know. I'm kinda sick of---_agh!"_

Keef grabbed her hand and pulled her away; I watched them go, shook my head, sighed, and turned to my open locker.

"_DIB-HYUMAN!_"

I dropped my head and sighed again before turning to stare right into Zim's snarling face. His eye was twitching. I wasn't sure I had ever seen him quite so enraged.

He jabbed me in the chest so hard I stumbled back into my locker. "You might think you have won this time, Dib-monkey. But you think _LIIIEEES! _I shall not allow you and that _Peggy_ to---to---heifer me!"

"...You mean 'cow?'"

"That too! You and your little Vosgarian _girlfriend_ do not frighten me! When I---"

"Hey Dib! Hey Zim!"

We both spun around. There was the familiar sight of Peggy, head cocked to one side with a grin. Instantly Zim's face turned almost white. He stumbled back, PAK clanging against the locker. He raised a trembling finger, tried to say something, then turned and ran screaming down the hall.

Several kids watched as he vanished, shrugged, then turned back to whatever they were doing.

"Jumpy little thing, isn't he?" she giggled.

"Um, yeah." Despite how happy the sight of Zim running screaming from the room would usually be, I cast a nervous, awkward look at Peggy. I still wasn't sure how much I liked this whole situation.

"Oh, Peggy---" We both turned---Mr. Gershwin had just walked up. "Could I speak to you for just a moment please?"

"Oh, sure, sir."

They walked off slightly so Mr. Gershwin could talk to her about some grade or test paper or something; as I watched them speak, Gaz appeared beside me, Game Slave held low in her hands. She stood there for a moment, watching the scene with me, then asked, "So, do you still _like_ her?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I cast another look over at Peggy. She turned slightly in her conversation with Mr. Gershwin and cast a small smile in my direction, blue eyes sparkling.

She really _was_ very pretty...

Then immediately the image of a giant, slimy, roaring gray slug flashed into my mind.

"No. No I do not," I said, in a completely calm, deadpan, serious voice.

Gaz shrugged, turned back to her Game Slave and walked away.

Mr. Gershwin walked off; Peggy trotted back over to me.

"Well, I sent my project in to my superiors, so I'm just waiting for a response now," she said. "And I submitted all the information about Zim and everything too. We'll just have to wait and see if my leaders can chew the Tallests out about it."

"And the people?" I waved one hand to indicate the hallway full of people. "You got everybody's memories erased and everything?"

"Yeah. Sorry," she added. Clearly she could tell I was disappointed. "But you know, as long as you don't try to tell anyone about _me,_ I won't stop you from doing your whole alien/Bigfoot/ghosts thing, trying to get evidence on Zim and all that." She winked. "And you still have the PITS."

"I think I'm done with the SEJI---" I sighed. "The _PITS_ for a while." I looked away darkly. "But you got everybody back okay? Gretchen, Keef, the teachers...Jack?"

"Huh?" She blinked. "I never _had_ Jack."

"What?"

"Remember? I told you that I specifically had the Capturebots skip you guys' houses. I only captured Keef because that was before I had a chance, after that they were programmed to avoid you guys."

"Well, yeah. But he got captured in the factory."

"What? No he didn't."

"Yeah, he did." I looked at her strangely. "He got captured when we broke into your lab. He was with Gaz and me, and then we heard him scream when your robots attacked him!"

She cast me a strange look. "...No," she said, shaking her head. "I never got him. The robots never brought him to me or anything."

"They---didn't?"

"No."

I stared, dumbfounded. "But then, what happened to him?"

"I...honestly don't know."

* * *

"Ugh...ugh..."

Jack trembled violently, the cold from the metal table burning his skin through his clothes. He struggled helplessly against the manacles, head turning wildly, bare toes wiggling in the dark room. "Wh---where am I?! Help! Somebody help!"

Then the dark shape stepped out from the shadows.

Jack gasped. "You!"

"Hi. I'm Greg! Welcome to the CIA," the man said, eerily happy, smiling as his sunglasses gleamed wickedly in the limited light. There was another flash as he held up something small and silver for Jack to see. "Now hold still, Jack, and this will all be over soon."

"N-no...not the clippers..._NOT THE CLIPPERS!_"

Greg went calmly over to the foot of the table, and lowered the toenail clippers to Jack's bare feet. Jack whimpered and closed his eyes tightly as tears began to form, turning his head away.

_Clip...clip..._

"_NOOOOOOOOOO!_"

* * *

...Seriously, did you guys just assume he was in one of those tubes in Peggy's lab, or did you honestly forget about him like I wanted you to?

Epilogue and other stuff coming soon! Please read and review!


	29. Epilogue

Epilogue

"And, uh...that's what happened."

I smiled hopefully at the floating screen. Agent Darkbooty stared back at me, his glowing red eyes devoid of expression.

"So you mean to tell me that of the _four_ children you managed to recruit into the Junior Investigators' Club over the course of a month, two were actually aliens and one has been captured by the CIA for secret toenail-related experiments?"

"Uh...yeah. Pretty much."

There was a long pause. Then he said, "The start-up kit is coming out of your expenditude allowance."

"But I---"

The screen went black and floated to the floor. My shoulders drooped.

"I didn't even know I got an allowance..." I muttered, before sighing and laying down on my bed to stare up at the blank ceiling.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Zim's Computer was surfing the Internet. It was odd that he got so much free time to himself. Zim had been awfully quiet lately.

Wait...Zim, quiet?

Something didn't compute.

Suddenly a notice from the gnomes---_PERIMETER BREACH!_

"Huh?" he asked, turning his attention away from this "Two Girls, One Cup" thing that he had been watching with great confusion.

The front door suddenly burst open---a long, glowing Vosgarian tube shot into the room and crashed across the floor, tearing up the tiles before slamming into the opposite wall. The Computer's frozen boss was inside it, along with the incorrigibly playful GIR.

The Vosgarian robot standing in the doorway glared up at base's ceiling.

"Tell him to stop trying to break into our base!" he snapped. And with that he turned and rocketed out of the house.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The front door slammed open. The squat, barefoot boy in torn and cut clothes stood there for a moment, wavered, then fell forward into the living room with a moan.

A woman appeared out of the kitchen, followed by a dark-haired man in a trench coat. The woman gasped when she saw the boy and ran to him, pulling him up into a sitting position and squeezing him tightly in her arms.

"Son! Are you okay?! Your father and I have been so worried you'd disappeared too!" She hugged him tightly, eyes closed, running her fingers through his straggly brown hair. When she opened her eyes she blinked, glance falling towards his bare feet. "...Did you get a pedicure while you were gone?"

Jack let out a low moan. Uncle Bill patted him on the shoulder. "There, there, son," he muttered, looking dramatically away.

--------------------------------------------------------------

RODGER was at the base, sitting on the couch, his disguise off, TV remote control in his hand. He was flipping through the stupid human television channels in annoyance, making a face with each new program. Why did everything this species did have to be so _stupid?_

He heard a loud squeal coming from the next room. A moment later his master came in, still in her human disguise but waving a Vosgarian datapad in her hand.

"I take it your grades came in?"

"_A-!_" she screamed, pumping her fists into the air. "I threw the whole thing together in less than a week and I got a freakin' _A-!_ And now I've got a _grant_ to continue my research! We'll be staying here for the next year or so! _Maybe longer!_ WHOO-HOO!"

She ran off into the next room. RODGER let his remote hand drop onto the couch and stared back at the TV. "Oh, yipitty-_freakin'_-doo-dah," he grumbled, turning the TV off angrily and slumping down in his seat.

* * *

And this story is _done!_

Whoo...more than nine months in the making. It's like a freakin' baby. :-o And finally complete. I'm kind of glad---more plot bunnies a-bouncing, and I have to admit I'm not totally happy with how this came out---it was a bit sloppily done, I wound up adding things that I had to squeeze in, etc. Maybe I'll edit this story sometime...but anyway, I'm glad I forced myself all the way through, and I'm glad that my readers seemed to like the result. :-) So, thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through almost thirty chapters---especially you guys and gals (...actually maybe just gals, it's hard to tell with screen names) who were reviewing every update, and you all who read my three "spin-offs" and all that. And to everyone---this is your last chance to review! Come on, I know there's people who've been reading without saying anything. Dirty cheaters! Come on, I really want to know---did you like it? Why or why not? What could I have done better? Feel free to send lots of critiques, suggestions on how this story could have been better, plot holes you noticed or what have you. Was Peggy too much of a Sue? Were the surprises too predictable? Should I change the character tags to Dib and Gaz, since it turns out Zim wasn't even the main antagonist? Opine! That's the whole point of reviewing, after all.

But just because you've read the last chapter doesn't mean this story is completely done! (...Despite that "this story is _done!_" comment two paragraphs above.) Just go down to that happy little chapter bar and see the two little goodies I've added for you. They're not much...but eh, they're something. ;-)


	30. Original CH 8

This is the original version of Chapter 8 I posted back several months ago, before realizing that it was no good. Well, at least I think it's better now; for one, if I had kept going in this direction, the story would have been about twenty chapters instead of thirty, and I think including Gretchen and all that in the story made the whole thing work better. Anyway, since I wrote, and still have reviews from, this chapter anyway, I figured I might as well post it. Feel free to skip over this and go straight to the "Trailers," though; there's really nothing that important here that's not in the revised story, except for stuff that's not as good. (Plus, since reading "Day of da Spookies," I realize this doesn't even fit in with canon. A family of horrible slug people live across the street from Dib, not a crotchety old man. I really should have been able to guess that for myself, too...)

* * *

Chapter Eight  
Shimmers in the Sky

"Ugh..."

"If you sigh one more time, Dib, you will pay. You will pay in horrible, horrible ways."

"Noted," I muttered, squeezing my pencil angrily and accidently snapping it in my hands.

Sitting at the kitchen table for the last half-hour, with Gaz watching TV in the next room, I had been completely unable to come up with any new ideas of where we could hold the S.E.J.I. meeting where Zim wouldn't be able to stop us. The skool, Zim had proven, was too easy to attack; my house, aside from being an obvious second choice, would have the problem of Gaz, who I could vividly imagine killing Jack the first time he started ranting about his CIA-controlled toenails. As it was she had put Keef in the hospital several times. The other members' houses could work, but I had no idea how to contact Jack--considering I didn't know his last name, and he had implied even "Jack" was a pseudonym, looking him up in the phone book would be impossible. Keef I could call easily, but the idea of going over to his house filled me with a cold horror deep in the pit of my stomach. And Peggy...well, I thought, feeling that cold horror turn into a sumersalt, I just didn't want to call Peggy right now if I could possibly avoid it.

Dad came up from his basement lab, humming to himself and carrying an old energy generator covered in radioactive goo. As he cleaned it in the kitchen sink, I looked down at my notebook--covered with failed ideas--and let out another sigh. A soda can came flying from the living room and hit me in the head. I grumbled as I picked it off the floor, getting up to throw it away.

"What's the matter, son?" Dad asked, looking down at me and the dejected look on my face.

"Oh, nothing," I mumbled, taking my seat again. "Just trying to find a new place for my Junior Paranormal Investigators' meeting."

Dad turned back to his plasma-cleaning with a small sigh, with the tiniest hint of "poor, insane son" mingled with his breath. I looked down at the paper again, then slammed my notebook in frustration. "Oh well. I'll just e-mail Peggy tonight," I said, mostly to myself. "Looks like the O'Sullivan house is my best bet."

"Did you say the O'Sullivans?!" Dad, who didn't seem to have been listening, suddenly turned around sharply, the generator still dripping in his gloved hands. "You don't mean Patrick and Debra O'Sullivan, do you?"

"Huh?" I blinked. "Er, no--I'm just talking about some kids from skool..."

"Oh," he said, frowning and looking dejected. He turned back to the sink. "Never mind, then."

I frowned. "Well, who are they?"

"Oh, just some colleagues of mine," Dad said, using the sink hose to get the hardest-to-reach bits of protoplasm and grabbing a dry rag from a drawer. "A married couple, working in astrophysics, astronomy, rocket technology, that sort of thing. They work at a university in another state, I've been trying to call them for the last week, but they've never responded..."

"Huh," I said simply, frowning down at my notebook. "The kids from my skool just moved here from out-of-state--I mean, it's a pretty common last name, but maybe I'll ask them if they know anything about that."

Dad gave a nod and went back to his work. I grabbing my notebook, I yelled a quick "goodnight" to Dad and Gaz and ran upstairs. I turned on my computer, looked up Peggy's e-mail from the previous day and got her address. Then I opened a blank e-mail.

And stared at it for three and a half minutes.

"Come on," I said, shaking my head forcefully and putting my fingers to the keys. "You're just asking her if we can have the meeting at their house, it's not like you're...asking her to marry you, or...something..."

The screen remained blank, however. Somehow I just had no idea what to write. My mind just kept coming back to that quick kiss in the cafeteria, and with each recollection my stomach did another flip-flop. What had she meant by that? She couldn't have been trying to...tell me something, could she? If she had, I couldn't just e-mail her afterwards sounding all casual like it hadn't happened...but then, the idea of bringing the incident up _in_ the e-mail sounded about as much fun as spending a night in Zim's operating room...

And for that matter, how did _I_ feel about that little kiss? I mean, it was a tiny thing, but no girl had ever kissed my on the cheek before...unless you counted Gaz punching me in the face. Not that I was interested in Peggy. That was ridiculous. I mean, she was so jumpy, weird, annoyingly chipper...okay, yeah, kind of smart, apparently, and kind of cute...if you liked cute...which I didn't. Did I? I had never really given the question much thought.

"Come on, Dib," I muttered to myself. "She didn't mean anything by it. You don't mean anything by it. It was just one stupid, tiny, insignificant little...huh?"

My eyes suddenly flickered to my window. Had I just seen something moving down the street?

No, there was nothing there. I shook my head again and turned back to the computer. My fingers hung over the keyboard for a moment, then I carefully typed _Dear Peggy._

Okay, that was easy. Now I just had to--

My eyes flickered over the window again. I had _definitely_ seen something move that time; indeed, as I watched I could see the bushes rustling in front of the Thompsons' house across the street.

Of course a normal person would have assumed it was a cat or something, but for some inexplicable reason the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I leaned closer to the window, squinting. Something was now reaching out of the bushes, moving towards the Thompsons' living room window.

A claw.

A metal claw.

My eyes widened. I recognized that claw instantly.

__

"Zim!"

I jumped out of my chair, dashed out of my room and was down the stairs within seconds. "Dadihavetogotheresanevilalienrobotoutsideattackingthethompsonshouse!" I yelled quickly, racing past the dining room table where he sat, still in his lab clothes with a collection of bills and his checkbook in front of him.

"Alright, son, have fun," he said in a genially distracted sort of way, not looking up as I slammed the door behind me.

I jumped off the front stoop and was halfway across the street before my feet hit the ground--my eyes widened as I saw the robotic arm pull out of the Thompsons' window, holding a struggling Mrs. Thompson by the face, pincers perfectly positioned to keep her from being able to scream. With one swift move it threw her into the purple bubble in its chest; she passed through it as easily as if it were water, and a moment later she was screaming silently from within.

__

"Stop!"

Okay, probably not the smartest thing to say in retrospect--I had no real illusions that it would just because I yelled at it, and of course it now spun around, its long eye growing wide and then narrow as it saw me approach. In its chest-bubble I saw Mrs. Thompson vanish--she seemed to have passed through some kind of hidden door into the robot's own body.

One robotic arm shot out at me. Without thinking (again) I leapt up, its claw missing me, and jumped towards it. I let out a cry and slammed my hand down onto its arm in a dramatic karate chop.

I should note that I don't know karate.

And that Element 133, or whatever this robot was made of, is really, really hard.

"Agh!" I fell to the ground, holding my now-throbbing hand. The robot turned around swiftly to face me. I jumped up, preparing to run, but it was too quick--between its eye and the compartment on its chest a small hole suddenly opened, like a mouth, and before I could react I saw a small ball shooting towards me like a bullet. As it flew it suddenly opened into a kind of net or web, which hit me, knocking me to the ground and tangling me in something black, foul-smelling and sticky.

"Ugh!"

I struggled to free myself, but the robot had swiftly lowered its body to the ground, its arms and legs vanishing--a moment later it had transformed into its rocket-looking mode, just like it had when I had fought it before. With a flash it suddenly took off, flying into the air and shimmering out of visibility.

"No!"

I finally managed to pull apart the net holding me--it was tough and sticky yet strangely easy to bend, so that in a few moments I was able to extract myself, though long strings of it remained stuck to my hair, clothes and skin. I watched in horror and fury as I searched the sky for the departed robot; I saw one brief shimmer in its cloaking field, and then nothing.

__

"Argh!"

I looked around wildly; Mrs. Thompson had been inside that thing! But what about the others? Were they safe, did they even know what happened? I ran over to her front door and pounded on it; there was no answer.

"Hello?! Is anyone home?!"

No response.

I let out a growl and kicked the front door angrily, glaring back over to my house. Zim! It had to be! But why? Why would he attack the Thompsons? As far as I knew he didn't know them at all. Had that robot been sent to attack me, I wondered, and made a mistake? Zim obviously knew my address, but it was just like one of his inventions to make that kind of dumb error.

Then again, that robot had been much better than most of his, I thought. He must have fixed it up since he sent it too the skool...

I let out a growl, punching the air angrily and was about to shout a threat to Zim--maybe he was listening nearby, I reasoned, or through a hidden alien bug, but mostly I just wanted to scream at him and didn't care much if he would actually hear. The words were on my lips when I saw it.

Another shimmer in the air, coming a small distance from behind my house--from the next neighborhood over, judging on the distance.

And a moment later, another shimmer from behind that one. In this brief shimmer I actually saw a flash of dark metal, though it lasted for just one second before it vanished again.

I looked to my left; there was another, coming from far down the street, around the corner...

My mouth dropped.

__

There was more than one robot.

But why...

I suddenly spun on my heel and ran next door, to Old Man Davis' house, and pounded on the door. No answer. I let out a growl of frustration and kicked aside the welcome mat--maybe there was--yes! A key! I grabbed it and quickly turned it in the lock, not bothering to think what Mr. Davis (who had called the police on me a few times before, after some rather loud late-night explosions) would say if I was wrong. I burst through the door into a dark living room.

"Hello?! Is anybody here?!"

The living room was empty. Everything looked normal. Except that the radio was on without anybody listening, and the armchair beside it had been knocked onto its side.

I raced out the door to the next house. And the next house. And every house on the street, pounding on every door, breaking into any door I could find a housekey for. Every single house was empty. Only when I ran across the street to my side did I finally spy some people in the windows of the houses, apparently oblivious that half of their neighbors had been abducted by a giant robot, or that, had it not been interrupted, it would likely have captured all of them as well.

My knees buckling, I fell down onto the sidewalk, sitting down a few houses away from my own. "There's more than one robot," I said, barely able to breathe from exhaustion and shock. "And that one--it wasn't even after me. Zim's not just attacking the club with them--he was trying to kidnap this whole neighborhood, this whole part of town..."

I looked up at the sky. I saw a sudden shimmer over the moon and shuddered. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew it could be nothing good.


	31. Trailers!

_**Dib in the PITS**_ is finally complete! _Whoo!_

But perhaps you're wondering---what's next for Fanfiction(dot)net's JoeMerl? Well...I'm not totally sure, to be honest.

Of course "Death of the Dib" will be continuing, and I want to take a little break to give that more work, maybe build up a few "buffer" chapters before I try working on anything else. And I have some one-shots and short story collections I have, some already written on my computer, that I might wind up posting. But in terms of a multi-chapter story, what will be the next thing I do? I have a ton of ideas; maybe _you_ can help me decide.

Here, out of the more-than-thirty-and-no-I'm-not-even-kidding-IZ-story ideas I have, are the ones I am most likely to write sometime soon:

**_

* * *

_**

**_Tallest Pink _**Sequel to "Dib in the PITS," in the sense that Peggy and RODGER will play important roles. Red and Purple are preparing for an important meeting with the Vosgarian Sludgelady, when suddenly a new Tallest joins their ranks. Meanwhile, a new boy in Zim and Dib's class may be hiding something to do with the meeting. It will be RedxOCxPurple...kind of. (Evil grin.)

**_A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Earth _**Prequel to "Dib in the PITS," taking place during the six months between Zim leaving Conventia and current events on Earth. Will feature Zim, Tak, Dib (maybe) and Peggy and RODGER in prominent roles. I only have vague plans for this one, so it's more likely I'll write "Tallest Pink" before getting to this.

**_Agent Stoker _**Agent Stoker of the Swollen Eyeball Network is young, smart, competent---and a big jerk! When he gets assigned to "help" Dib catch Zim, foes may have to work together to get rid of their mutual annoyance.

**_A Weekend at EARL's: House Party of Doom _**Sequel to my popular one-shot, "A Weekend at EARL's," and possibly "Agent Stoker," so this may have to wait. Zim's Computer and Dib work together to get rid of Zim for a while, but Keef, Tak and the Swollen Eyeball Network may wind up ruining their plans.

**_((Untitled)) _**An Irken Voot Cruiser crashes on Earth, depositing two new "kids" into Dib and Zim's skool. Are they new Irken Invaders? Or something even stranger? (Okay, that summary sounds all mysterious, but this story's going to be funny.) Would be a slight crossover with "Death of the Dib," but not to the point that non-readers of that would be confused.

**_Amethyst's Teenage Rebellion of Doom _**A few years in the future, Zim has to deal with a Utopian Invader trying to steal his job, and his daughter's growing sense of teenage angst. An authorized parody of Invaderzimfannumber1's stories. Not that she knows what will happen. Heh-heh-heh. (_Another_ evil grin.)

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Please note that a lot of those titles are speculative, and that while I am asking for your opinions, I ultimately serve the Almighty Plot Bunnies---if you all vote for one thing and they want another, sorry. Plus I have other fandoms I want to write in (any TDI fans here? Anyone?) But please feel free to review/PM me with what you'd like to see, and thanks for reading! :-D


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